zawia volume00: CHANGE

zawia volume00: CHANGE

Zawia#00:Change discusses the significantly changing realities imposed on all social, political and economic systems and their influence on design disciplines. The complex global situation and continuous fluctuations within these systems demand a new understanding and repositioning of the field. The contributions aim to respond to issues such as the failing economic and political systems worldwide, growing discontent with capitalism, unemployment, social injustice, and social media empowerment, if the discipline is to remain relevant and involved in the remaking of these structures. Zawia#00:Change will attempt to demonstrate whether architects are ready to embrace changing ideals and new modes of operation, and whether they are willing to help better people’s lives rather than focusing on glorifying design or architecture.

zawia#00:change .
Editorial Team Ahmed Gamal Ahmed Shawky Kareem Hammouda Mazin Abdulkarim Moataz Faissal Farid Copy Editors Emily Neslon Nourhan Faissal Farid Salma Barakat Translators & Arabic Editors Dina Magdy Kareem El Wishy Art Directors Ahmed Shawky Moataz Faissal Farid Graphic Design / Layout Moataz Faissal Farid Marketing & Public Relations Salma Barakat Website Ahmed Shawky
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Zawia would like to thank its network of collaborating friends, their energy, support and suggestions are crucial in enriching the content of this issue. We thank ... Alp Arisoy Bernardo Lopes Emilia Makaruk Emily Nelson Gabriel Feld Jocelyn Danna Magda Piotrowska Sharath Nayak Vera Djurdjevic Yibo Xu
zawia#00 : CHANGE .
Editorial Diwaniah. Joseph Grima, Markus Miessen and Elian Stefa The Global Street: Making The Political Saskia Sassen Untitled. G.LA Berling is Never Berlin. Martin Abbott Project 1984. Nathalie Frankowski and Cruz Garcia (WAI Architecture Think Tank) Mediterranean Cities, Neo-Liberal Drift & Revolts. Salvatore Palidda Betweenlands. Loris Savino and Marco Di Noia Architecture and Geopolitics Today. Interview with Stefano Boeri The Battle. G�raud Soulhiol The Grey City. Pier Paolo Tamburelli Change: Architecture and Engineering in the Middle East. Hassan Radoine Re-Use. Isabella Inti. Empowering The Migrant. uinten Seik The Place of Architects and the Architecture of a Place Mohamed ElShahed Change: PhotoEssay. Fillipo Roman, Giovanna Silva and Frncesco Giusti From Change Control to Adaptation. Ahmad Borham Housing Against Citizenship. Jovan Ivanovski and Ana Ivanovska Homeless. Dina Magdy The Desert in the City. Milan Zlatkov Tahrir Square: The Public Space Revisited. Noheir Elgendy Top-Down/Bottom-Up Urbanization. Nabian Nashid and Carlo Ratti Think The Un-Thinkable! Think 2050. Daniel Dendra A Myriad of Little Changes . Nicol� Gobini A Radical Change in Perception. Meredith Hutcheson The Word on the Street. Gamal El-Din Sadek A[rch]natomizing Somalia. Zain AbuSeir Crossbenching. Interview with Markus Miessen
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EDITORIAL.
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From grand master-plans and city visions to luxurious estates, impressive iconic skyscrapers, books, conferences, and exhibitions; architecture and design have been patronized by the wealthy and powerful, thus remaining mostly inaccessible to the majority of the world's population. Architecture remains a grand form of public art, it creates environments, shaping everyday realities, and impacting our collective quality of life. It is inherently engaged with society. Architecture and urban design are only successful when they enhance and diversify lives. It is this continuous dilemma of contradicting intentions that challenges designers and architects today. In recent years it became more evident that times are changing, questioning architecture and urbanism's ability to respond. In an age where rating agencies determine the economic fate of sovereign governments, where multinational corporations have the power to control states, where economic and political hardship have triggered Occupy Wall Street, the Indignados and many other spontaneous horizontal movements, where new geopolitical con gurations of global economic power continue to rise (BRICS), and where the Arab Spring continues to struggle for revolutionary change, it is crucial to question this change and its e ects on architecture and urbanism. Architects nd themselves again in a moral dilemma between the ultimate satisfaction of their egos through increasingly retrograde neoliberal schemes combined with contemporary urbanism opposed to providing for many people's desire for change, refusing abuse of power by their patrons with disproportionate resources, limiting their control over people's well-being, engaging with their local communities and actively participating in social change initiatives. As citizens worldwide struggle to gain control over their political, social, and economic lives, by demanding more rights to guide their own futures, architecture is forced to react. On one hand, the emerging eld of public interest design o ers a possible new direction for architecture, one that considers the needs and seeks involvement from the other 99 percent of the global population that has historically been marginalized or disempowered from shaping their environments. is direction is more grounded to reality, and xed to increased social responsibility and participation. On the other hand, new technologies, social media and crowdsourcing provide new horizons for implementing this change. Crowdfunding urban projects in local communities, along with the explosive open-data growth and its use by the new generation of city-dwellers to monitor and direct local governments, work together in identifying civic problems and seeking solutions. is means that a new relationship between city governments and residents is formulating to provide citizens with an equally hands-on role with our cities' physical spaces: streets, sidewalks and public parks. How could we then describe or situate the role of the designer in this newly formed relationship? Within this signi cant moment of change, this volume of ZAWIA questions if architecture can construct new strategies, processes, scenarios, or institutions with a deeper sense of social responsibility;
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whether architecture is capable of addressing its relation to political, economic structures and societal change in renewed vigor. It questions if this opportunity of radically changing times can be a new stance for architecture, an opportunity to propose not ideal worlds, but suitable ones. Navigating within the possible arguments and positions related and relevant to this very speci c moment of Change, it discusses issues such as the role of architecture as a manifestation of state, memory and its association in urban regeneration processes, dissecting archetypes of political spaces and their sacredness, portraits of city residents involved in developing and managing their local communities, the emergence of new geopolitical and economic order, and the dialectic of technology and governance; its possibilities and failures. Architecture will never die completely. It has existed and survived throughout history in various forms. Despite the recent strong tendency of marginalizing its role in building new environments and shaping societies, it is and will continue to be indispensible. Perhaps this is only another moment where the discipline has to change
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Editorial.
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DIWANIYAH: An Architectural Space of Political Exchange.
Joseph Grima and Markus Miessen, videography by Elian Stefa
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Joseph Grima (born 1977) studied architecture at the Architectural Association in London, and since then has pursued
an international career as a curator, essayist, critic and researcher in the elds of architecture, art and design. Between 2007 and 2010, he directed the New York gallery Storefront for Art and Architecture. Since April 2011, he has been the editor of Domus. As a curator and independent researcher, he has designed and planned installations for events and institutions including the Venice Architecture Biennial, the Shenzhen/Hong Kong Biennial of Urbanism and Architecture, EXD'11 Lisbon Biennale, and the Beijing Museum of Urban Planning. Currently he is co-curating the 1st Istanbul Design Biennial. He is the author of several books, including Instant Asia (Skira, 2007), and Shi : SANAA and the New Museum (Lars M�ller, 2008). He has taught architecture at several university institutes, including the Strelka Institute for Media, Architecture and Design (Moscow) and Trondheim University (Norway). As special correspondent for Abitare, he has published essays and articles in a large number of international magazines, including AD, Abitare, Domus, Tank, Urban China and Volume, as well as in the Italian newspaper il Sole 24 Ore. Markus Miessen (Refer to page 282 to read full biography) Elian Stefa (born 1985) is a Milan based Albanian-Canadian architect, curator and researcher. He graduated from the Politecnico di Milano in 2009 with the Concrete Mushrooms project -- an autonomous territorial initiative which he co-founded with the aim of re-evaluating and transforming the 750,000 abandoned bunkers of Albania. e initiative has since become a nonpro t organization promoting cultural planning and sustainable tourism. He is currently the Associate Curator of `Adhocracy', one half of the 1st Istanbul Design Biennial which brings a new perspective on the process and possibilities behind design. Previously he has curated and collaborated on exhibitions at La Triennale di Milano, the EXD'11 Lisbon Biennale, Stazione Futuro at the O cine Grandi Riparazioni of Torino, the Helsinki Museum of Cultures, Strelka Institute, and the Harvard GSD. His published works have been featured in Domus and Abitare.
Architectural Association ( ) .Domus . Storefront for Art and Architecture . . . EXD 11 .( ) "New Museum" "Shi : SANAA" ( ) "Instant Asia" Abitare . . il Sole 24 Ore Volume , AD Abitare Domus , Tank , Urban China . ( ) ( ) , � "Concrete Mushrooms" . . " " . . ," " , (Stazione Futuro) EXD .Abitare Domus � Image Courtesy of Elian Stefa
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Kuwait is a country in which political parties are banned: candidates for the democratically elected parliament stand in a personal capacity. In reality, however, a series of political groups act as de facto parties, ful lling mandates for Bedouins, merchants, Sunni and Shiite activists, secular le ists and nationalists, to name a few. roughout recent history, Kuwait's political process has found an indirect form of democratic expression in a deeply-rooted cultural tradition which also corresponds to an architectural typology: the "Diwaniyah". e Diwaniyah is a simple, four-sided room, with seating on each side, in which daily meetings are held. Here, political opinions are freely expressed in informal gatherings in the homes of government o cials, leading citizens, lobby groups or even on street-corners. It is said that the term originally referred to the section of a Bedouin tent where the men and their visitors met apart from the family; in the old City of Kuwait, the Diwaniyah was the reception area where a man received his male colleagues and guests. Numerous typologies have evolved from the original archetype, adapting to speci c functions. Today, hosting or frequenting a Diwaniyah is an indispensable feature of Kuwaiti men's social life. A central element of the ritual of this discursive and spatial articulation of Kuwaiti politics is the consumption of tea and co ee. By providing a platform for facilitating quick communication and consensus-building that transcends the limited social function of the tea-room or co ee-house, Kuwait's Diwaniyahs constitute an instrument of political expression and debate that in many ways mirrors the role of Western newspapers (certain formal Diwaniyahs may discuss particular topics, sometimes with invited guest speakers). It is no coincidence that the Diwaniyah was of central importance in the struggle against the 1990 Iraqi occupation--a fact acknowledged with poetic subtlety in Colonel Khalaf Al-Tebi's address to the GCC (Gulf Cooperation Council) prior to the rst Gulf war. Diwaniyahs are the core of Kuwait `s social, business and political life, where pressing and timely matters can be discussed, alliances can be formed, and networking can be undertaken. Yet, if one considers the Kuwaiti socio-political framework, they also act as a form of distributed assembly where consensus is achieved in small, interconnected groups, and societal grievances are broadcast and ltered as they climb the hierarchy of these congregations.
`Our interest in the Diwaniyah rests in its concrete role as an architectural/spatial typology that is also a protagonist in Kuwaiti political life and contemporary history.'
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Diwaniyah. Joseph Grima, Markus Miessen and Elian Stefa
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A signi cant event was the 2009 parliamentary elections, where four female candidates won their seats as Kuwait's rst female lawmakers. All four had been visiting those typically male Diwaniyah spaces prior to the election--a fact not always positively received. University professor Aseel al-Awadhi, whose campaign made her a political celebrity in the tiny emirate, and economist and women's rights activist Rola Dashti, were among the four women to win seats while conservative Islamists lost ground. On January 18th 2011, precisely one month a er Mohamed Bouazizi's self-immolation sparked the rst protests in Tunisia, the Emir of Kuwait Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah gave each Kuwaiti citizens a `gi ' of 1000 Kuwaiti Dinars and a food grant for one year, reportedly to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the liberation from Iraqi occupation and the 50th independence anniversary. is gi ended up being a double-edged sword, as Kuwaiti law allows citizenship to be given only to the male linage descendants of the Kuwaiti residents [1920], leaving two thirds of the population unable to vote or bene t from many of the state's programmes. is, combined with the Arab world's volatile atmosphere, initially fuelled resistance by the stateless Bidoon population whose protests against second-class citizenship have continued relentlessly, and o en violently, into 2012. Local protests and discussion regarding the unfolding Arab Spring became central topics in both political and casual Diwaniyahs throughout 2011. Tension also continued to grow steadily within Kuwait's di erent social circles. Politics also culminated to a massive civilian protest on September 21st, general strikes throughout October, and the occupation of the National Assembly [November 16th] organised by opposition leaders and Kuwaiti citizens, leading to prime minister Nasser Mohammed AlAhmed Al-Sabah and his cabinet resigning. Our interest in the Diwaniyah rests in its concrete role as an architectural/spatial typology that is also a protagonist in Kuwaiti political life and contemporary history. e Diwaniyah is both real and metaphorical, a spatial construct with concrete political rami cations; an architectural typology whose precise historical role in de ning a nation's political identity can be clearly and extensively documented. It is also the elementary particle of Kuwaiti politics - an unusually crystalline manifestation, in a commonplace and humble architectural form potential as a facilitator of political expression
Scan the qr code to view the video documentaries, or go to: , : http://youtu.be/LxBmwE3xUtE http://youtu.be/yOQwCrv9b0s
Images are courtesy of: Elian Stefa :
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Diwaniyah. Joseph Grima, Markus Miessen and Elian Stefa
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Diwaniyah. Joseph Grima, Markus Miessen and Elian Stefa
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THE GLOBAL STREET: MAKING THE POLITICAL.
Saskia Sassen
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Saskia Sassen is the Robert S. Lynd Professor of Sociology and Co-Chair,
e Committee on Global ought, Columbia University (www.saskiasassen. com). Her recent books are Territory, Authority, Rights: From Medieval to Global Assemblages (Princeton University Press 2008) and A Sociology of Globalization (W.W.Norton 2007). She is currently working on When Territory Exits Existing Frameworks (Under contract with Harvard University Press). Her books are translated to over 20 languages.
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Tahrir Square, Cairo. � Filippo Romano
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Street struggles and demonstrations are part of our global modernity. e uprisings in the Arab world, the daily neighborhood protests in China's major cities, Latin America's piqueteros and poor people demonstrating with pots and pans --all are vehicles for making social and political claims. We can add the anti-gentri cation struggles and protests against police brutality in U.S. during the 1980s and in cities worldwide from 1990 onwards. Most recently, over 100,000 people marching in Tel Aviv, a rst for this city--not to bring down the government, but aiming to better housing and jobs. Part of the demonstration is Tel Aviv's tent city, housing mostly impoverished middle-class citizens. Spain's Indignados have also been demonstrating peacefully, in Madrid and Barcelona, for jobs and social services. ey have now become a national movement with Spaniards from all over gathering for a long march to EU headquarters in Brussels. ese are also the claims of the 600,000 who went to the street, late August, in several cities in Chile. Combined, these are among the diverse instances causing me to think of a concept beyond the empirics of each case -- e Global Street. In each instance, I would argue that the street, the urban street, as public space is to be di erentiated from the classic European notion of the more ritual- ized spaces for public activity, with the piazza and the boulevard the emblematic examples. I think "the street," which of course includes squares and any available open space, as raw and less ritualized. e Street can, thus, be conceived as a space where new forms of the social and the political can be made, rather than for enacting ritualized routines. With some conceptual stretching, we might say that politically, "street and square" are marked di erently from "boulevard and piazza": e rst signals action and the second, rituals. Seen this way, there is an epochal quality to the current wave of street protests, despite their enormous di erences, i.e. from the extraordinary courage and determination of protesters in Syria to the ash crowds convoked via social media to invade a commercial street block for ten minutes in the US, UK, and Chile. In this short essay I rst examine some aspects of the Middle East and North Africa uprisings. e e ort is to situate these speci cs in a larger conceptual frame: the focus is on dimensions of these diverse politics that have at least one strategic moment in the street � the urban street, not the rural or suburban street. e city acts as the larger space that enables this, as well as the lens that allows us to capture the history making qualities of these protests, subjects I subsequently explore.
When Powerlessness Becomes Complex.
e city is a space where the powerless can make history. at is not to say it is the only space, but it is certainly a critical one. Becoming present, visible, to each other can alter the character of powerlessness. I make a distinction between di erent types of powerlessness. It is not simply an absolute condition that can be attened into the absence of power. Under certain conditions powerlessness can become complex, by which I mean that it contains the possibility of making the political, the civic or history. ere is a di erence between powerlessness and invisibility/ impotence. Many of these protest movements seen
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The Global Street: Making The Political. Saskia Sassen
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in North Africa and the Middle East are a case in point: these protesters may not have gained power, but have already made political history. is leads me to a second distinction, which contains a critique of the common notion that something good happening to `the powerless' signals empowerment. e notion that powerlessness can be complex may be used to characterize a condition that is not quite empowerment. What is being engendered in the current uprisings in the MENA region is quite di erent from what it might have been, say, in the medieval city of Weber. Weber identi es a set of practices that allowed the burghers to set up systems for owning and protecting property against more powerful actors, such as the King and the Church, and to implement various immunities against despots of all sorts. Today's political practices, arguably, have to do with the production of "presence" by those without power, and with politics that claim rights to the country rather than protecting property. What the two situations share is the notion that through these practices new forms of the political (for Weber, it would be citizenship) are being constituted and that the city is a key site for this type of political work. e city is, in turn, partly constituted through these dynamics. Far more than a peaceful and harmonious suburb, the contested city is where the civic is made. We see this potential for developing the civic across the centuries. Historically the overcoming of urban con icts has o en been the source for an expanded civicness. e cases that have become iconic in Western historiography are Augsburg and Moorish Spain. In both, an enlightened leadership and citizenry worked at constituting a shared civicness. ere are many other cases, both old and new. Old Jerusalem's bazaar was a space of commercial and religious coexistence. Modern Baghdad, under the brutal leadership of Saddam Hussein was a city where religious minorities (equally a threat as the majority), Christian and Jews, lived in more relative peace than today. `Outsiders' in Europe's cities, notably immigrants, have experienced persecution for centuries; yet in many cases their successful claims for inclusion also had the e ect of expanding and strengthening the rights of citizens. We see some of this capacity � to override old hatreds � in its own speci c forms in Cairo's Tahrir Square. Additionally, in Yemen's Saana, where once con icting tribes have now found a way to coalesce with each other and protest against the existing regime. Tahrir Square has become the iconic example, partly because key features of the process became visible as they stretched over time: the protesters' discipline, communication mechanisms, the vast age diversity, politics, religions, cultures, and the struggle's extraordinary trajectory. In fact, we now understand that these features are also burgeoning elsewhere. Yemen's protests have intended on being peaceful and unarmed. Indeed many members expressed distress when one tribe � a long-standing enemy of the regime � launched an armed attack. In a matter of weeks, the ethics of the protests and the complexity of the situation allowed enemy tribes to nd a trusting system in the city, for sharing the struggle against the regime. is was not a minor achievement. e conditions and mechanisms are speci c to each of the cases we have come to refer to as the Arab Spring. Yet, in all these instances, overcoming con icts has become the source for expanded civicness. is is not urban per se, but this civicness assume particularly strong and legible forms in major cities. Furthermore, we see the powerless enabled: urban space makes their powerlessness complex, and in that complexity lies the possibility of turning the political civic.
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The Global Street: Making The Political. Saskia Sassen
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Other cases in the region augment these features and add yet another dimension: the limits of superior military force. e rebels in Benghazi took full possession of the city's territory and launched a veritable experiment in civicness. e superior military power of the Ghadda regime could not prevent this �even before NATO's intervention. As I discuss later, Israel's superior military power has not fully acquired its needs from Gaza. Nor has Syria's massive military deployment stopped the unarmed protesters. ese diverse cases point to the capacities of the city to function as a sort of weak regime: it cannot destroy superior military force, but it can obstruct it. People versus armed gunmen in an open eld are a di erent condition from people in a dense urban setting versus such gunmen. ese are issues I examine in the next two sections.
THE CITY: Its return as a lens onto major world events.
In the global era, the city has emerged as a strategic site for understanding some of the major new trends recon guring social order. e city and the metropolitan region are locations where major macro and global trends, even when not urban, materialize. It is, then, that a space can indicate non-urban developments. e city might be just one moment in what can be complex multi-sited trajectories, but it is a strategic moment. e city has long been a site for the exploration of major societal confrontations. However, it has not always been a heuristic space capable of producing knowledge about some of the major transformations of an epoch. In the rst half of the 20th century, the study of cities was at the heart of sociology. is is evident in works by Simmel, Weber, Benjamin, Lefebvre, and most prominently the Chicago School, especially Park and Wirth, both deeply in uenced by German thinkers. ey all confronted massive processes: industrialization, urbanization, alienation and a new cultural formation they called "urbanity." Studying the city was not simply studying the urban. It was about deciphering the major social processes of an era. Since then, the study of the city gradually lost its privileged role as a lens for discipline and as producer of key analytic categories. ere are numerous reasons, of which
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The Global Street: Making The Political. Saskia Sassen
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Tahrir Square, Cairo. � Francesco Giusti
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the most important question, developments of method and data in social sciences. Critical was the fact that the city ceased being the fulcrum for epochal transformations and hence a strategic site for research about non-urban processes. e study of the city transcended into analyzing "social problems." is resurgence of the city as a site for illuminating major contemporary dynamics is evident in multiple disciplines: sociology, anthropology, economic geography, cultural studies, and literary criticism. In the global era, economists have begun to address the urban and regional economy in ways that surpass older forms of urban economics. Globalization has given rise to new information technologies, the intensifying of transnational and translocal dynamics as well as the strengthening presence and voice of socio-cultural diversity. All these are at the cutting edge of change. ese trends do not encompass the majority of social conditions; on the contrary, most social reality probably corresponds to older continuing and familiar trends. Although these involve only parts of the urban condition, they are strategic by marking this condition in novel ways and make it, in turn, a key research site for major urban and non-urban shi s. e Social Physics of the City: Making visible the limits of military force Cities have long been sites of con ict, racism, religious hatred and expulsions of the poor. Simultaneously, they have historically evinced a capacity to triage con ict through commerce and civic activity; this contrasts with the history of the modern national state, which has tended to militarize con ict. Major developments in the current global era are making cities the sites for a whole new range of con ict. Religion is such critical vector for city con ict�both as cause and consequence. ese are not necessarily urban in nature, even though the city is a key site for materializing of religious sentiment into actual con ict. is raises a question as to whether cities are losing this capacity to triage con ict through commerce, and the civic, to avoid militarizing con ict. Large cities at the intersection of vast migrations and expulsions could o en accommodate an enormous diversity of religions, ethnicities, cultures and income. ese were also spaces of a kind of peaceful co-existence for long stretches of time. Hence, con ict does not inhere in these di erences as such, but rather in a larger systemic condition within which the city can then switch from a space of fruitful co-existence to one that contributes to con ict. In both cases speci c capabilities of the city get mobilized: being neighbors can go in either direction, and so can neighborhood life. e same individuals can experience both conditions and even enact that switch. Dense urban spaces can deliver a sort of collective learning about diversity, or they can become the sites of murderous attacks. e complex city system could transform a disease into an epidemic, or it could generate "positive epidemics" as in the so-called 2011 Arab Spring. Here we can see a critical dimension that shows us that cities can function as a weak regime: killing civilians in a city is considered a di erent level of horror from killing people in, say, the jungle or villages. In that sense, the urbanizing of war points to the limits of superior armed power and, perhaps, the weight of weak orders such as the human rights regime. e countries with the most powerful conventional armies today cannot a ord to repeat Dresden with rebombs or Hiroshima's atomic bomb � whether in Baghdad, Gaza or the Swat valley. ey could engage in a series of activities � rendition, torture, assassinating `problematic'
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The Global Street: Making The Political. Saskia Sassen
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leaders, excessive civilian bombings and so on� in a history of brutality that can no longer be hidden and, seemingly escalated violence against civilian populations. Yet, superior military powers stop from pulverizing a city, even when they have su cient weapons. e US could have pulverized Baghdad, likewise Israel with Gaza. But they did not. It seems to me that the reason was not respect for life or the fact that killing is illegal �they do this all the time. Rather, I would posit that pulverizing a city is a speci c type of crime, one causing horror, a kind of ontological insecurity that people dying from malaria does not. e mix of people and buildings � the social physics of the city � has acquired the capacity to temper destruction, not to stop it. What makes this possible? It is the combination of "non-urban" deaths in a city and a sticky web of constraints consisting of a mix of law, reciprocal agreements, and the informal global court of public opinion. It is the collective making that is a city, especially in its civic components. Ontological insecurity was also part of the response to the bombings in NY, Mumbai, Madrid and London. History repeatedly points to the limits of power. Unilateral decisions by the greater power are not the only source of restraint. Multiple interdependencies act as restraints. To this, I add the city as a weak regime that can obstruct and temper the destructive capacity of the superior military power, yet another component for systemic survival in a world where several countries have the capacity to destroy the planet. Under these conditions the city is both a technology for containing conventional military powers and a technology of resistance for armed insurgencies. e social physics of the city, its material and human features, are an obstacle for conventional armies wired into urban space itself. Would Gaza have been completely destroyed if it was not densely populated, but was occupied only by Palestinian-owned factories and warehouses? e Limits of the Powerful Communication Technologies Beyond complex questions of norms, the city also uncovers limits and unrealized potential of communication technologies. Much has been written and debated about Facebook's role in organizing the Egyptian protests. In the US, there was much debate on the notion of a "Facebook revolution" signaling that the protest movement was at the limit, a function of communication technologies, notably social media. It seems to me a common type of con ation of a technology's capacities with a massive on the ground process which used the technology. My research has shown that this type of con ation results from a confusion between the logics of the technology designed by the engineer and the logics of users. e two are not one and the same. e technical properties of electronic interactive domains deliver their utility through complex ecologies that include a) non- technological variables, i.e. the social, subjective, political and material topographies, and b) the particular cultures of use by di erent actors. us, Facebook can be a factor in very diverse collective events � a ash mob, a friends' party, the uprising at Tahrir Square. However, that does not mean they all are achieved through Facebook. As we now know, Al Jazeera was a more signi cant medium, and the network of mosques was the foundational communication network in the case of Tahrir Square's Friday mobilizations. One synthetic image we can use is that these ecologies are partly shaped by the particular logics embedded in diverse domains. us a Facebook group of friends doing nancial investment aims at achieving scal gains through using the technical capability that is quite di erent from Cairo protestors conjuring up post-noon Friday mosque prayers.
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is di erence is evident, despite sharing the same technical capabilities to maneuver one aim� whether it's an investment or going to Tahrir square. When we look at electronic interactive domains as part of these larger ecologies, rather than purely technical condition, we make conceptual and empirical room for the broad range of social logics driving users and the diverse cultures of use applied to these technologies. Each of these activates an ecology (the `typical' Facebook subscriber informing `friends' of a new restaurant or party) or is activated by it (the protesters struggle using Facebook to signal an upcoming action). e e ect of taking this perspective is to position Facebook in a much larger world than the thing itself. In this way, we focus on Facebook minimalist� not the internal world with its vast numbers of subscribers, a billion and counting, but the larger ecology within which a Facebook action is situated. Tahrir's protest movement also had the power to bring a new ecology into the use of Facebook, thereby showing both the limits of the current format and the capacity of collective action in the city to inscribe technology. Facebook is o en described by experts today as part of social life for the majority of its subscribers. However, the network capability involved clearly cannot be con ned to this function. e shi s that become visible when we take into account the types of ecologies mobilized point to a far larger range of practices. e 2011 Egyptian uprisings embodies these shi s and relations. In Tahrir Square, Facebook space is not the aforementioned "social life", it is more akin to a tool. Social thickness can also come about from this, but it is not likely in most cases. Toolness rules. What stands out, what gives us the dramatic entry of Facebook as "actant" is the larger ecology that shapes the use of F-space in these cases. e potential of digital media for immobile or placecentered activists concerned with local issues points to developing larger ecologies that will be di erent from those of globally oriented users. For instance, the fact that speci c types of local issues (jobs, oppression) recur across the world engaging local, immobile activists, can engender a kind of globality. is is a prominent feature of the Arab Spring �a recurrence of regional protests independent from direct communication across di erent places� and yet, combined they make for a larger and more complex formation than each individual
24
The Global Street: Making The Political. Saskia Sassen
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Around Tahrir Square, Cairo. � Francesco Giusti
,
. :
25
struggle. is points to a kind of imaginary where the actual communications are a third point in a triangle �as part of the enabling ecology of conditions that is not simply about communication among participants. is invites us to ask: How can the new social media add to functions that go beyond mere communication and thereby contribute to a more complex and powerful condition/capability?
is essay explored some vectors at work in the MENA region uprisings, with the aim of opening up a larger conceptual eld to understand the complex interactions between power and powerlessness. is exploration makes it possible to examine the heuristic potential of these events, that tell a larger story. Situating this discussion in the larger question of the return of the city as a site for political and civic changes, but also as a lens for understanding larger modern transformations that may not be urban, but nd one strategic moment in cities �the moment that makes them visible. In this regard I focused on two key features of the current period where cities are a lens helping us situate a larger process. One of these was what urban uprisings tell us about the limits of superior military force; I argued that the "social physics" of the city can obstruct, though not destroy, superior armed power. Similarly, these urban uprisings show us both limitations and potential of the new communications technologies, especially social media. e uprisings, especially in Egypt where there was full access to such media, showed both their limits �the mosques and Al Jazeera were more important in Cairo than Facebook� and, I argue, also their unrealized potential. Some of the key features of a range of struggles happening not only in the MENA region but also, in places as diverse as in China, Israel, Chile, Greece, Spain, the UK and US lead me to argue that the question of public space is central to giving the powerless rhetorical and operational openings. is concludes that e Global Street is distinguished from the piazza and the boulevard in the European sense
`The complex city system could either transform a disease into an epidemic, or it could generate "positive epidemics" as in the so-called 2011 Arab Spring'
' � � `
26
The Global Street: Making The Political. Saskia Sassen
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27
UNTITLED
G.LA
(G.LA) .
General.la is a Certi ed CreativeGeniusTM and has been `sharpening the cutting edge' of design culture and trend for the past decade. He has shown his work at MoCA and A+D Museum of Art and Design, and is currently working on a retrospective monograph.
www.General.la
General.la ... (MoCA) , (A+D Design Museum) .
"Untitled Phoenix # 3 (We Run e World)" General.la 2011 : Digital Iris Print 84" x 36"
�( ) # � : " x "
29
"Strength can be de ned as the capacity to change"
e notion that change as a viable means to survival is as oblique as regarding any state as that of permanence, evaluating the insinuation that the invariance of perceptibility conquers any other point of view regarding the nature of `the objective'. Although, in abstract, the qualities of change are generally attributed to any performance of di erence, the actual intention of change is simply `movement'...because it connotes a morphosis: transformation , and thus intentionality (although neutral in its quali cation), and entirely the predisposition of substance. Change occurs over time: it is only possible within the context of "what once was" as is inherently di erent from the "what is now". We have never been in anything but a state of change, as all objects and experiences are within the boundaries of `Time'... entropic or vivacious; then, now, or.. to be. Change isn't a choice, although all choices change over time, as it is the most consistent of qualities, although its range of possibilities borders on in nite. e transitionary nature of almost every substance, every material, even the qualities by which any objective state is described most likely employs a direct or indirect adjective of `Change'. is unifying property is almost equally as omnipotent as `Time', as both are complimentary is their contextual modi cation and valuation of each other in totality of content. e vastness by which `change' is always occurring is almost replete in vagueness, as to properly qualify the notion of change it must be modi ed with context: " the change of ____", "____ changes into ____" , "only its ____ changes". Yes, we are in a time of `great change', as our physical biology and its human-de ned `weaknesses' (such as `mortality') are questioned by our pro ciency in technology. What is Nature? Are we now the context for which technology exists ("we" being `the human condition')? IS THE DESIRE TO EVOLVE THROUGH TECHNOLOGY (the digital) A FALSE EXPECTATION OF SALVATION? How is our pursuit of `Curing' us from our `human-condition' changing our nature? As the practice of Architecture responds to the achievements of Digital Technology, and changes towards the `parametric', are we now more or less architects of the premium experience? Change in and of itself is inevitable. It is Wisdom that modi es Change towards Positive or Negative results. De nition of this wisdom is the intended goal
30
Untitled. G.LA
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.
BERLIN IS NEVER BERLIN.
Martin Abbott
.
Martin Abbott is a master of architecture graduate
from the University of Technology in Sydney and currently living and working in Berlin. He spent the last year on exchange at TU Berlin, where he discovered a city he wanted to continue living in. He's still living in Berlin, not only learning German and working, but more thinking, writing and making. He is dreaming up wonderful ideas and plans for today and tomorrow. Martin's student work has been published in Architectural Design and Architectural Review Australia. He has worked on a number of diverse projects encompassing multiple scales, types and areas of interest. A series of projects that has intensi ed his gaze at the city, an area in uenced not only by architecture and design but broader social, political and economic factors.
. . . , Architectural" . . "Architectural Review" "Design . .
e Kitchen Monument, urban activator and magni er. Traveling through Europe since 2006 as a mobile activator for temporary communities, Duisburg 2006.
Photographer: Marco Canevacci � Raum Labor /Plastique Fantastique
. , . ,
35
change | ch nj| the act, process or result of altering or modifying.
Berlin is the famed capital of uni ed Germany, a city living in a state of urban transformation. A ordable rent, vast quantities of space and a creative population, who are active participants in Berlin's regeneration, seed a delightful array of physical and cultural obscurities. is community involvement and empowerment di erentiates Berlin from other European capitals. Over the past two decades, Berlin has thrived on relentless change that gives the city an inconsistent and fragmented character. e process of change continues to add to a disordered urban history and is encouraged by antagonistic political, cultural and economic qualities. In 1945, Berlin was carved up by rival political powers asserting diverging political ideologies and until 1989 was a divided city. An urban frontier separated rival political identities and forged a city focused on the unifying potential of tomorrow. is divisive period manifested competing approaches to city development. West Berlin enlisted the help of progressive and experimental architects, the likes of whom `reads like an encyclopedia of modern architectural history.' At the same time, the East concentrated on building the appearance of a powerful and successful state through large urban projects such as Karl Marx Allee or Alexanderplatz. A newly uni ed Germany, paved the way for a construction boom in Berlin and an array of new projects, profoundly altered the face of the city. During `the short period between 1990 and 2000, nancial investment in new construction in the city amounted to 250-300 billion DM, equivalent to as much as 150 billion euros'. is period of rapid, large scale construction is obtusely visible across Berlin today. Despite continuing urban in ll, a large quantity of open space remains to stimulate and in uence the city's many moods. Currently, the process of urban renewal in Berlin is led by large scale public and private investment, such as the billion dollar project to reconstruct the old Royal Palace in Mitte, in the centre of Berlin. e process is more subtly demonstrated by a transient residential population. Unusual for a european capital, Berlin's urban fabric is still under construction; In the immediate area around the central railway station, Hauptbahnho , there are three large architectural projects in progress. On the other hand, it is critical to assess the symbiotic relationship between the city and small scale projects that in uence the city's unique urban qualities. is leads us to the question, what is contributing to Berlin's contemporary physical and cultural growth? 48 Stunden Neuk�lln is a small scale art festival taking place in public and private venues across the district of Neuk�lln in Berlin. e weekend long festival provides a decentralised platform to unite hundreds of shops, galleries, studios and lounge rooms as locations for the arts. City streets are transformed into urban galleries and act as a kind of connective tissue, bringing together unrelated and spatially distant exhibition spaces. Initiated by the community art organisation, Kulturnetzwerk Neuk�lln, the festival was established to positively respond to the negative and inaccurate 1997 Der Spiegel article `Endstation Neuk�lln'. In contrast to the article, the festival highlights Neuk�lln's cultural diversity and vibrancy. In 1999, twenty- ve venues participated in the festival. Each year, the festival has grown and this year organisers expect more than 400 locations to be involved.
36
Berlin is Never Berlin. Martin Abbott
. . . . . . . . , . .< . . . - . . . . �� . . . � . . � � ( ) . .� � . . . . . . . . . . .
.
37
Martin Ste ens is the director of 48 Stunden Neuk�lln and also lives in the area. He has witnessed the relentless waves of gentri cation sweeping across Berlin and now, Neuk�lln. He sees the growth of the festival closely following changes in the district, such as the changing faces of people in the area. Historically working class, Neuk�lln was also an entertainment district. For many, Neuk�lln provided a genuine introduction to an a ordable way of living in Berlin. Migrants arriving in Berlin, chose to establish themselves in Neuk�lln, establishing the districts cultural diversity. More recently, Neuk�lln has provided a di erent context to the fashionable districts of the east. Artists looking for space and a ordable rent moved into the neighbourhood and began self producing socio-cultural projects with local residents. Similarly, the festival re ects Neuk�lln's inclusive nature. Today, rent is increasing and tourist numbers are climbing, reducing Neuk�lln's ability to maintain its level of inclusiveness. Higher rent is already a ecting sections of Neuk�lln. Martin Ste ens has observed this problem in the Reuter Kiez, `it's changing from an area of mere artistic quality into a place for commerce and amusement.' In this area, small studios and anarchic project rooms are closing due to their inability to pay rent. e wealth of social and culturally orientated projects, are being forced out by more pro t driven services. Can this gentrifying process be ameliorated to better serve the needs of local residents? e continuing arrivals to Neuk�lln will inevitably a ect the area's dynamic. Working in a similar vein, the eight member strong architecture collective raumlaborberlin is attracted to work in di cult urban locations; places torn between di erent systems and planning ideologies, which could also describe Berlin. Matthias Rick is a member of the collective and sees Berlin as a schizophrenic city. Matthias arrived in West Berlin in 1988 to study architecture. A er the wall came down, he was living in one of the many squats established in East Berlin. Attracted by the large amount of available space, Matthias discovered it was more interesting to test the spatial limits of the city in Prenzlauer Berg. Shortly a er, he le university to focus on his own body of work.
38
Berlin is Never Berlin. Martin Abbott
. . � .� . � .� . � � . . . . . . .
Prinzessinnengarten engages with the local community. It brings people together to strengthen community ties and educate locals with the skills and know-how to have a say in the changes going on around them in Kreuzberg.
. � �
Photographer: Marco Clausen � Marco Clausen /Prinzessinnengarten
.
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Raumlabor aspire to make cities better places to live. eir community and socially orientated approach to architecture and urbanism was founded on the back of a series of self directed experiments into living during the early `90's. Living alongside friends in a squat, they ran a bar, started a club and established a lifestyle in Berlin, an image that is now being on-sold to visitors. A forthcoming project is a multidisciplinary proposal to construct a temporary international festival called ` e great worlds fair 2012 / the world is not fair' at the former city airport Tempelhofer Feld, now a city park. e project is a reaction to the International Building Exhibition proposed for the same location. Raumlabor's approach is contrary to the way of working taken by increasingly large scale, top down development appearing in Berlin. ey hope to show the city the potential of the esteemed site, should the community be incorporated into the project's development. e Kitchen Monument is another raumlabor project that embraces this sense of community and aims to magnify social interaction. Working alongside another local architecture studio, Plastique Fantastique, the project has been visiting cities across Europe since 2006. e project engages local residents and is a tool for urban activation. e project possesses an ephemeral structure, a transparent plastic skin that forms a collective space for a moment. Matthias believes this project shows many working potentials because people and their ideas can appropriate the space. Operating in a similar way to 48 Stunden Neuk�lln and raumlaborberlin, Prinzessingarten is a community project that opened in 2009. Prinzessingarten is a quasi urban farming initiative, with the dual goals of increasing knowledge about food production and engaging the community socially, in order to bring ecological ideas to the attention of local residents in the district of Kreuzberg. Prinzessingarten equips local residents with the skills to empower them to participate in the dialogue surrounding urban development in their communities. e garden concept is temporary. Situated on a vacant city lot, they have installed a mobile garden using recycled objects such as boxes, crates and plastic bags. Essentially, everything can and probably will be moved at some point. is project will by nature, respond to the changing demands of the city. Key to the project's ongoing success is the availability of the site, a vacant lot at Moritzplatz. Marco Clausen is one of the founders of Prinzessingarten and is a witness to the discrete urban changes transforming the district. Situated in the heart of Kreuzberg, Marco sees the situation today, as having changed dramatically from 10 years ago. Berlin appears to be a city with much open space, however the reality is a city experiencing radical change, particularly concerning real estate. Marco thinks it would be di cult to start another project like this now, and sees the various pressures on the garden's current site. Prinzessingarten's site is city owned and having watched the city sell many properties over the last 10 years he is unsure of their future. It is clear Berlin is unlike other European cities. A ordable rent is disappearing, forgotten spaces are slowly being remembered and gentri cation is taking hold in new areas of the city such as Neuk�lln. Alarmingly, Kreuzberg formerly one of the most a ordable rental districts in the city, is now home to some of the highest rents in Berlin. Why is Berlin unlike any other city in Europe? Perhaps it is because of the weight of history, strong social and collective bonds linking residents or the never materialised
40
Berlin is Never Berlin. Martin Abbott
. � : . . � � � / . . . . � � . . . . . � � � � � � . . . . . . .
`The Kitchen Monument is another raumlabor project that embraces this sense of community and aims to magnify social interaction.'
� � ' `.
.
. . . . . . .�� .
41
capital city plans. In Berlin, growing vibrancy and diversity, coupled with a politically active and engaged community is creating tremendous social and cultural outcomes. Projects like 48 Stunden Neuk�lln, Prinzessingarten and raumlaborberlin are special and are as much in uenced by the city as they are in uential to its own character. ey are key contributors to the city's contemporary physical, social and cultural wealth. New projects like Prinzessingarten or raumlaborberlin will continue to emerge, but in the face of pro table, large scale projects, it is uncertain weather future initiatives will have the same opportunities to ourish. How does Berlin maintain fertile ground for continued physical and cultural growth of the city into the future? ere is a concern that as the city develops and costs rise, the social and cultural needs of the city will be neglected due to a lack of nancial or political will needed to support these organic, small scale interventions. ere is little support for the initiatives that make this city unique. Marco Clausen is unsure about Berlin's future, but hopeful the strong social and political components of the city will survive. For Marco, Berlin has always inspired grand city visions and `most of the time, they fail and in the ruins of failure, new little things start to evolve'. What will Berlin look like in 10 years? Looking to the past, it is certain to surprise. is idea of ongoing urban renewal in Berlin can be seen in Karl Sche er's saying `Berlin is condemned forever to become and never to be.' It is this continued state of emotional, cultural and physical change that interconnects Berlin's history and explains the city's present form. ese interconnections de ne Berlin as a dynamic city, shaping its own future
42
Berlin is Never Berlin. Martin Abbott
. . � � � � � � . . . . . . . , . .�� �� .
e growing art festival 48 Stunden Neuk�lln, unites hundreds of shop's, gallerie's, studio's, lounge room's and roof top locations for the arts in the rapidly changing district of Neuk�lln. , � � Photographer: Am�lie Losier
. , , ,
.
43
PROJECT 1984. What About the
Possibility of a Kynical Architecture?
Nathalie Frankowski and Cruz Garcia (WAI Architecture
.
( WAI )
ink Tank)
WAI Architecture ink Tank is a Workshop for Architecture Intelligentsia founded in Brussels in 2008 by Nathalie Frankowski and Cruz Garcia. Currently based in Beijing, WAI focuses on the understanding and execution of architecture through a panoramic approach, from theoretical texts, to narrative architectures, to urban and architectural experiments. WAI asks What About It? www.wai-architecture.com www.waithinktank.com
( WAI ) WAI . . WAI . � �
Project1984 Air Strip One, MiniLuv Close-up. . . � WAI Architecture ink Tank
45
"For an architect, in the instant that he has undivided attention of a patron with the power to realize his designs, literally nothing else matters; not a re alarm, not even an earthquake; there is nothing else to talk about but architecture." Dejan Sudjic, e Edi ce Complex " e fully developed ability to say No is also the only valid background for Yes, and only through both does real freedom [begin] to take form." Peter Sloterdijk, Critique of Cynical Reason
City
Four towers rise above the city like muscular trunks in a grass eld. eir scale obliterates any possible question about the intentionality of their disproportionate size. e exaggerated disparity between them and the urban fabric could not have been accidental. e towers were unquestionably built to be the main focus, the sole objects of attention. ey are by far the most important buildings in the city. e towers deliver an explicit message of datum and order. Visible from any point in the city, the towers exploit the potential of architecture as iconography. ey are archetypes of power. ese identical concrete monoliths, three with facades perforated by square windows and the other one solid like a hermetic bastion, soar until reaching six hundred meters of height. Each tower represents one of the four governmental ministries: love, truth, peace, and plenty.
Competition
e towers did not always exist. For them to be completed an architect had to be selected. e ministries joined to hold an invited competition for one architect to design their four ministerial buildings. e contest called for a "series of monumental structures that through their form, and their use of image, outstandingly portray the values of society. Buildings capable of communicating the permanence and importance of the institutions they host." A group of the world's most famous architects were invited to submit a proposal for the project. Without hesitation (how to resist the temptation of such an important competition?) each designer proposed a series of buildings. Although varying in form, the proposals recurred to a similar strategy: they were all architectural icons. Some projects were typical signature trademarks, buildings that responded more to a consistent development of the architect's formal language rather than to the speci city of the competition's program. Other proposals adopted a more generic approach presenting buildings with the predictable aesthetics of market-oriented architecture. One of the submissions stood out because of its obvious simplicity. Of all the projects it was the only one with four towers of identical shape, consolidating the competition subtext with a single form to make the ministries appear like omnipresent manifestations of power. Following the submission deadline, all the projects were displayed through a series of exquisitely arranged public exhibitions containing
46
Project 1984. WAI Architecture Think Tank Nathalie Frankowski and Cruz Garcia
, . ( e Edi ce complex) . "" "" (Critique of Cynical Reason)
. . . . . . . . . , . : . . . . . . . ; . . . . . (almanac) . � �
. .
47
conceptual plans, detailed speci cations, explanatory diagrams and all the physical models. Newspapers, magazines, TV shows, and radio programs ooded the public with news ashes and continuous updates about the projects and the architects who designed them. Bursting the bubble of suspense, some weeks later the winner was announced. Following the award ceremony the Almanac of Contemporary Architecture, the most prestigious architectural publication, devoted twenty pages to the master architect under the title "Project 1984" featuring his watercolors, ink drawings, pencil sketches and some poetry verses from his sketchbook. One of the pictures from the Almanac displayed a group of gures, between them members of the respective ministries, representatives of sponsor corporations, the architect, and some expert advisors looming perversely over an architectural model. e scaled model of the master plan included a reduced version of the city, and from four di erent points of the almost homogeneous composition of low rise buildings on the surface, stood four behemoth towers of slender pyramidal shape and truncated tops. Strategically collocated at legible height, each one of the towers was engraved in the fa�ade with the slogan of the ministries in bold, capital letters: WAR IS PEACE, FREEDOM IS SLAVERY, IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH.
Celebration
Needless to o er the remaining plot of a story of already known resolution; it must be made clear that this story does not aim to defend the architect for either cultivating his political naivet� or his opportunistic ambitions. A mixture between architectural fairytale and social nightmare, this story imagines a preceding scenario for George Orwell's political masterpiece 1984 (1949). It explores that perversely "ideal" moment on an architect's career when he nally has the opportunity to bridge the gap to fame and immortality and construct the most prominent buildings in the city. at paradoxical instant when the edi ce of humanity comes crumbling down hammered by the same forces that make the architectural chef d'oeuvre rise in the rst place. As in 1984, architecture has been a fervent accomplice to some of the most atrocious political regimes in recent memory. In the 20th century alone,
Critical
`How can a profession whose education and practice �based on selling projects through visual manipulation and redundant, subjective, apolitical rhetoric-- maintain a critical stance when the conditions in the real world are completely fueled by politics? Is architecture the ultimate ideological anesthetic?'
48
Project 1984. WAI Architecture Think Tank Nathalie Frankowski and Cruz Garcia
. . . . , . : , ; . () . . . , �� �� �� . - . -
- ' - `
. .
, . � , � . (Sloterdijkean kynicism) ��
49
architecture shi ed from Nazism to fascism to communism to capitalism piling up a staggering amount of icons that oscillate from extreme historicist kitsch to extreme re ned modernism. In fact, a closer inspection of the historical relationship between architecture and politics reveals that Iofan, Speer, and Terragni were not rare exceptions of a beautiful profession in search for tools for a better quality of life, but the blunt symptoms of a discipline with the dangerous aim to achieve its grandiloquent delirium at all cost. How can a profession whose education and practice �based on selling projects through visual manipulation and redundant, subjective, apolitical rhetoric-- maintain a critical stance when the conditions in the real world are completely fueled by politics? Is architecture the ultimate ideological anesthetic? Cynical In this ctional prelude to 1984 it is not coincidental that the architects were used as instruments for propaganda and political control. With cynicism becoming systematically embedded in the architect's intellectual repertoire since his academic days, the mantra that claims "architecture is architecture, and therefore should be judged as architecture" has been rendering architecture as an apolitical tool to serve politically charged ends. In the real world, unless we are ready to challenge the way we teach, think and practice architecture, and consciously discover what tempts us to contribute to whatever awfully detrimental projects are being planned by technocrats, CEOs and politicians, and nally become prepared to substitute the prevalent unconscious cynicism of the profession with a Sloterdijkean kynicism (the one that resists, provokes and subverts), we may not only continue being faithful contributors to some of the most dangerous regimes in the world, but we may even become the master architects of Project 1984
Project 1984 Minitruth Headquarters Entrance . � WAI Architecture ink Tank
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Project 1984. WAI Architecture Think Tank Nathalie Frankowski and Cruz Garcia
. .
51
MEDITERRANEAN CITIES, NEOLIBERAL DRIFT AND REVOLTS.*
Salvatore Palidda
*.
Salvatore Palidda was born in Sicily, he obtained his phd degree in Sociology
and European Studies of the `Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales' of Paris, he is a professor of sociology at Genoa University. Since 1980 he works as researcher on international migrations and on military and police a airs. He has been responsible of several European research projects. He published several books and scienti c texts in Italian, French, English and Spanish (as editor and/or author: Citt� mediterranee e deriva liberista 2011; Migrations critiques. Repenser les migrations comme mobilit�s humaines en Europe, Karthala, 2011; (ed. with Dal Lago) Con ict, Security and the Reshaping of Society. e Civilisation of War, Routledge, London, 2010; Racial Criminalisation of Migrants in the 21st Century, Ashgate, London 2010 (also in Spanish); Mobilit� umane, Cortina, Milan, 2008; Polizia postmoderna, Milano, Feltrinelli, 2000; Analyse critique des violences polici�res et politiques en Italie, in La violence politique en Europe, La D�couverte, Paris, 2010; Policy of Fear and Decline of Political Sphere, in Warlike Outlines of the Securitarian State. Life Control and Persons' Exclusion, OSPDH-University of Barcelona, 2009; Istituzioni e ma a, Nuovo Dizionario di ma a e antima a, EGA, Torino, 2008; Missions militaires italiennes � l'�tranger : la prolif�ration des hybrides, in�Cultures & Con its�.
. (Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales) . . . ( )
Athens . Image Courtesy of: Midori Hasuike
53
is text is the introduction of the book Mediterranean Cities and Neo-Liberal Dri , edited by the author, published in Italian by Mesogea, Messina in September 2011. e book describes the most important changes that occurred in the last twenty years until 2010 in Istanbul, Beyrouth, Tanger, Tunis, Alger, Barcelona, Marseille, Genoa and Naples. In all historical epochs the consequences of great social transformations manifest themselves most dramatically in the cities. e "second great transformation" that was sparked during the Seventies, i.e., the so called neo-liberal economic revolution and its globalization1 was responsible for changes running as deep as those occurring in Europe during the industrial revolution between the XVIII and the XIX centuries. Such changes included mass urbanization, the disruption of urban con gurations, epidemics, constant revolts and revolutions. As the process of neo-liberal transformation accelerates in cities, it promotes amnesia and wipes out social memory, and not only among the youth. In his lms, Ken Loach describes the collapse of English industrial society; movies like Blade Runner portray a tragic picture of American urban society in its process of becoming, bearing a stark resemblance to the Los Angeles described by Mike Davis. Few people remember the great mobilizations of workers and students of the 60s and 70s or many other social struggles, e.g., over housing. eir sizes are in stark contrast with today's di culty in achieving social aggregation, collective unity and political action, in spite of the success of recent demonstrations resisting the results of neo-liberal policies. Social con ict always materializes in cities because it ultimately has to do with the right of citizenships, a right that has been almost completely erased by neo-liberalism. Processes of reducing the power of city dwellers in Italy, as well as industrial decline which is replaced by a kind of segmented and heterogeneous submersion of manufacturing in the local social networks or family relationships with its proliferation of piecework at home, gang masters, chains of subcontractors, and nally the total dismantling of previous social and economic structures, the above elements describe the rise of a semi submerged and a total submerged or informal economy that caused the enslavement of ever increasing millions of people, including children and the elderly.
1 In order to avoid terminological misunderstandings, let me clarify that by "second great transformation" I mean the changes set in motion in the 1970s, i.e. the upheaval in economic, social, political and cultural structures caused by three revolutions: the technological revolution, including computers, communication and transportation; the nancial revolution, and the political revolution (the accentuation of asymmetry in political, military-police, and administrative power). As in previous historical periods, globalisation is nothing more than the expansion on a world scale of this process dominated by neo-conservative liberalisation, which is in fact antithetical to the democratic liberalism theorised by Schumpeter, Polanyi, Keynes, Galbraith and practiced in Italy by Adriano Olivetti (as opposed to the Agnelli family and others who have always placed their bets on wars, super-exploitation and authoritarianism).
*Preliminary remarks
54
Mediterranean Cities, Neo-Liberal Drift & Revolts. Salvatore Palidda
. �Mesogea� .
*
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In many of these areas Italians would be later replaced by immigrants while at the same time manufacturing would be outsourced to North Africa, to East Europe and even to Asia and Africa. e changes above marked the triumph of submerged, "postmodern" economies causing the proliferation everywhere. is "second great transformation" of economic relations is mainly responsible for the growing demand for new individuals who can be enslaved, i.e., immigrants to be relegated to a new legally precarious status, or worse yet to the status of a non person, devoid of rights. is is how the "postmodern" economic boom came to be, with its reliance on the multiplication of uncontrolled interweaving of legal, illegal and criminal activities in all elds, construction speculation, corruption, tax evasion, pollution, and security based citizen mobilizations. Such mobilizations ignore a tragic lack of safety in the work places and in the dwellings of marginalized sectors of the population while insisting on the submission of the newly enslaved based on ethnicity. is model of development tends to destroy any economic, social, political and cultural con guration that fails to conform to the neo-liberal model. It creates mostly ephemeral products destined to ensure ever increasing pro ts and ignores posterity, i.e., the future. It treats young people who refuse to conform to the neo-liberal credo as "inconvenient posterity" or "the dregs of society". Under neo-liberal management, expenditures of the political organization of society are to be allocated mostly for the privatization and maximization of pro ts to the detriment of the res publica and the future (su ce it to think of the management of the national health system, public works, transportation as well as the general attacks against the public sector, resulting in raids against utilities, waste management, public instruction, university and research). is is the neo-liberal model exported all over the world by the neoconservative managers of globalization, especially in medium and large cities. e outcome is a tendency towards homologation (uniformity) achieved through semi-standardized operations that rarely encounter any social and political opposition. e lack of energetic response is due to the erosion of collective action, the weakness of trade unions, and the almost complete disappearance of the le and truly democratic liberals. Today it is impossible to nd speci c features that set cities of one continent apart from those of the others. e uniformity of architectural design and materials commonly used in construction are among the factors that intensify this homologation, along with the discourses on the "postmodern" city. ese discourses emphasize the cult of decorum, morality and hygiene, all encompassed within an obsessive demand for security, making today's cities similar to the cities of European colonialists. Whoever visits the di erent cities on the Mediterranean sea will nd more or less the same architectural innovations and city planning features typical of European or North American cities, i.e., big Plexiglas skyscrapers, large parking lots or structures, new subway and light-rail systems, "postmodern" forti ed districts (like the gated communities), camera surveillance everywhere, an ever increasing number of public and private guards and police, the obsessive presence of screens o ering advertising or sca olding used as billboards that are intentionally kept well a er the facades have been refurbished for the sake of continuing advertising , new large public works or "installations" that aim to be ever more shocking, malls and shopping centers, boutiques, bars, restaurants, multi-screen cinemas, discotheques, pubs and
e Neo-liberal City
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self-service restaurants, o en built as a photocopy of existing ones. Everywhere we observe the same environment which atomizes and practically reduces city dwellers to robots who can circulate only if they have money in their pockets or, better yet, an international credit card. Everyone expresses his/ her enjoyment with trivial, super cial insights worthy of barstool sociology, observations that tend to be blind to the situation of the youth, those working in temporary positions or under the table, and the new slaves who are buried in kitchens or working underground (as in Fritz Lang's Metropolis or Le Roi et l'oiseau by Grimault and Prevert). is is also reinforced by the fact that labour is o en hidden in the outskirts of cities. is section of city dwellers is totally ignored in the polls, those costly tools that aim at investigating their victimization or their needs but then are con ned to interviewing only owners of a landline, i.e., relatively well-to-do residents. Every city feeds on its "shadows", outskirts and slums while producing human surplus, i.e., former humans who are too worn out or who have not had the ability or chance to adapt. ose who have dared to rebel, the "dregs of society" such as the Roma or the undocumented workers who have resorted to burrowing in tunnels in the outskirts of cities (for example, in the interstices under the frontage roads or the highways or in the sewers) are even more disregarded. e great transformations that took place in cities like Barcelona, Marseille, Genoa, Istanbul, Athens, and now again in Port Said, Tangiers, Casablanca, Rabat and... Milan; those transformations are now accomplished through the organization of big events, as has actually been happening for a few decades in every city of the world. It has been accomplished through the Colombiads, the World Expo, the Olympics, trade shows, festivals, by declaring a city the "European capital of culture" and so forth with increasing numbers of sensationally staged events, which by de nition must be grandiose and international, with a component of artistic and cultural allure, or better yet, multicultural and democratic attractions. e game of nancial speculation, woven together with real estate speculation and the unregulated intersection of legal, under the table and criminal activity, and now neo-enslavement, repeats itself as in a photocopy. Its elements include: big media and political ballyhoo, stock market launching, famous architects and city planners (o en le leaning ones) battling it out with each other, throngs of real and fake companies vying for contracts. e destruction begins along with devastation, pollution, the sprouting of a few skyscrapers or mega-structures eventually in the name of postmodern architecture and city planning that are supposedly "sustainable and respectful of human rights". To go along with this program, all you have to do is close your eyes to the multiple sub-contracting, the degradation of the suburbs and the various indirect consequences, including the awful quality of construction materials and the unsafe character of recent construction. It is shocking to recognize how similar these operations are to one another in all European and Mediterranean cities. For example, one can see on the Internet that the towers designed for Tunis are very similar to those designed for the Milan Expo or to those designed by "archistars"2 for that matter.
2 e category of �archstars� deserve a fun but also sad pamphlet. As known, they are a few famous architects, each one is in fact a transnational corporation, with o ces of their o ces (or "factories"), as well as various real estate properties, in major cities around the world. eir projects and most famous works (or monstrosities) are building everywhere especially in the last forty years (from the Pompidou Centre to the towers in the UAE and several countries). See Gabriella Lo Ricco, Silvia Micheli, Lo spettacolo dell>architettura. Pro lo dell>archistar�, Milano, Bruno Mondadori, 2003; F. La Cecla, Against Architecture, PM Press/Green Arcade, 2011.
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It seems that Berlusconi, Berisha, Ben Ali, Qadda and Putin have agreed on similar nancial-real estate operations that are consistent with a neo-liberal model of privatization of the foreign policy of their respective countries.3 In this context, all the cities on the Mediterranean have increasingly become places of immigration, emigration, transit of human beings of every type (including the various types of tourism, commuters, shopping trips or business travel) . But at the same time, proliferating everywhere is the tendency towards protectionism, prohibitionism and criminalizing the enemy of the day, including the Roma and immigrants, and all other marginalized sectors of the population. Postmodern cities are in fact revolving doors through which the "good" can be selected and the "others" can be "consumed" and then expelled. In reality, integration, rejection, exclusion, divisions based on ethnicity and race coexist everywhere. Cities become a hybrid in which aspects of the past coexist with new transformations within dynamics that reduce the political organization of a society to a sort of management characterized more by violence than peacefulness, based on power being increasingly asymmetric, and a deepening polarization in pro t and wealth distribution. Transportation, health, education, universities, research, security, social services, prisons, housing, urban development, public administration, crisis and "natural" catastrophe management, media: all these sectors are forced to adapt to a managerial logic aimed at maximizing pro ts to the detriment of the weakest sectors of society. e game of amplifying fears and insecurities unleashed by this type of development is con gured as a "total political fact" of "postmodernity" thus manufacturing consent for the violent management of social disorder, i.e. for zero tolerance. is eliminates e ective prevention and social recovery in favour solely of repression and penalization. e logic of war has become pervasive, whether it be war against terrorism or undocumented workers, war to make cities safe or war against gra ti and other "urban incivilities". What passes for "governance" has become a petty management of urban society which may even provide jobs to some le leaning or anti-globalization artists, intellectuals, city planners and architects. It may even employ ecologists, garden guerrillas, or some gra ti or street artists who have gained a certain measure of fame. Such "governance" may even approve of wall gardens or creative people who have come up with such apparently original solutions while ignoring the expansion of submerged economies that have come to strongly resemble neo-slavery, or the expansion of security as a business and zero tolerance. e post-modern city may sparkle, may appear to be a place of freedom (for the rich and those in a dominant position), but as proved by the repressive events that transpired during the G8 summit
3 In this regard, one of the most emblematic cases revealed by Wikileaks concerns the huge quantities of monumental construction projects built in Turkmenistan by the French group Bouygues which, according to Le Monde, turned that country into its paradise � at least for a few years- thanks to the greediness of the hermetic, sultan-like dictatorship ruling over it." In his book Turkmenistan, edizioni CNRS, 2010, Jean-Baptiste Jeangene Vilmer explains that Bouygues and its competing Turkish group Polimeks share almost all the big ... ...construction projects in Turkmenistan, without bids, to build real estate projects that are never used. In a telegram of the US Embassy it is noted that "corruption and nepotism remain the problems of Turkmenistan and that Turkish group and Bouygues were particularly successful in such a lucrative industry as construction because they mastered the local business environment" (www.lemonde.fr/documentswikileaks/article/2010/12/12/wikileaks-le-paradis-turkmene-de-bouygues_1452460_1446239.html). ere are clear analogies between the above and the so-called P3 shadow government in Italy (2011) and the promoters of big public works scams who were indicted on July 2010, and the same could be said for known (and unknown) occurrences in other countries. Non-creative destruction and useless or ephemeral construction have become one of the most pro table sectors of the neo-liberal economy on a worldwide scale.
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meeting in Genoa in 2001, the post-modern city is indeed ferocious against those who have no place in this new neo-liberal frame. ese include, for example, the earthquake victims of L'Aquila who insist on not understanding what a stroke of genius the "new towns" proposed by Berlusconi are, or those obstinate Sardinian shepherds who are not resigned to becoming extinct . Until 1990, the citizens of North African countries did not need a visa to travel in Italy and there were intensive relations and exchanges between the northern and the southern shore of the Mediterranean. Today in fact the southern shore has been pushed towards the Arab countries, the East, the Orient (China) and the United States. Where does the future lie? In Port Said? In Tangiers or in Naples, Venice, Genoa, Barcelona, Marseille or Milan? What scenario can we expect on the economic and political horizon of the Euro-Mediterranean space? How should one interpret the unexpected fact that in less than two years the harbours of Tangiers and Port Said have become the most important ports in the Mediterranean, while those on the Northern shore seem to be languishing? What can we make of Istanbul, a city whose population is approaching 15 million (it quadrupled over a few years) while Genoa is going back to the same population it had in 1921? What can we say about Genoa and Marseille, two cities that with uneven results are attempting to turn themselves into tourist and services centers, while cities and transportation in Morocco, in Tunisia and elsewhere are undergoing an incredibly rapid modernization and improvement in quality (su ce it to think that high speed trains will connect Tangiers to Casablanca and to Marrakech...)? What does Europe produce as it becomes entrenched in a kind of protectionism accompanied by an o en racist Eurocentrism, while in fact expanding to the East as opposed to other countries of the Mediterranean? And what can be said of the Union for the Mediterranean (UpM) which seems to be a hopeless, empty slogan, an almost surreal paradox compared to a process of construction of the European Union, which should logically include all countries on the Mediterranean hence being Euromediterranean rather than just Eurocentric? Perhaps these questions may appear na�ve and rhetorical, as may seem for the demand for universal rights in opposition to the growing violence brought on by the champions of North and South fundamentalism with a pseudo religious cover or simply by militaristic fanatics or followers of the business of war in all elds and at any cost. Not to speak of the pettiness of local politicians devoted to local wars against the Roma people, immigrants or mosques who suddenly sing the praises of hygiene, morality, decorum and zero tolerance. ey fail to realize that they are managing decline on behalf of the greediness of strong actors, leaving behind only scorched earth punctuated by new "towers" that perhaps won't be standing for too long. Does it make any sense to be building new skyscrapers for the Expo in Milan 50 years a er the building of Pirelli skyscraper? What will happen to "postmodern development" considering that the native population is growing older by leaps and bounds and shows no intention of leaving room for the future, exacerbating its racism towards those who at the moment are forced to live like slaves and even conduct their social life in hiding? How much corruption and violence, how many abuses will the neo-liberal revolution generate in the cities? But well beyond these concerns, the circles of power of all the great metropolis, together with their experts, show no signs of putting a stop to their paradoxical promotion of ever richer and attractive cities for the international middle classes, the so-called city users,
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the creative classes, a set of post mass tourists otherwise known as "serious tourists" even while proposing a new population increase. ese two factors are antithetical today precisely because the concept of a city that is "safe" for the middle classes and tourists relies on the social exclusion of the lower classes even through violent means. Resistance & Possible Futures Over the past few years there have been evident signs of failure of the neo-conservative revolution as shown in the nancial collapse and in its incapacity to propose reasonable and solid alternatives to economic trends that have no future. It is likely that the neo-conservative free trade economists will insist on treading water and will lash out as they desperately hold on to their positions of power causing additional human and material disasters. Will the resistance to neo-liberalism succeed in doing more than just survive and stand there licking its wounds? It is certainly di cult, but the only hope lies in people getting together to build a space for collective action, especially the victims of the submerged economies. ere have been some encouraging signs in that direction, mature expressions of a capacity to maintain a critical stance in the face of a dominant discourse obsessed with growth and consumerism. is resistance is not carried on by small groups of people "who have dropped out from the world" but rather represents an ever spreading critical awareness of the need for "a fair and sustainable development" which turns into the ability to govern a "wise de-growth". An example of this new movement that deserves attention is taking place in Totnes, a small town of 8000 people in the south west of England. It is what has been called a Transition town, i.e., a project designed and practiced as a grassroots e ort by people who, home a er home, street a er street, have joined in to make it a reality. Since the project has been in place, families have been able to save a lot of money without giving up building very comfortable, high quality homes for themselves. ey were also always able to guarantee e cient, clean public transportation that is a ordable or even at zero cost. is type of experiments is not becoming generalized because it runs opposite to the interests and worldviews of the powers that be and their experts (social scientists, architects, etc.), with their obsession with growth through a rush to consumption, waste, nancial and real-estate speculation. ere are other positive experiences that deserve to be known and propangandate, for example the experience of Hamburg, which has become European Green Capital 2011 (http://hamburggreencapital.eu) through an extraordinary transformation under way for decades, especially with the active participation of majority of inhabitants. Unfortunately, now this experience is likely to fail; once again, the nancial games seem to prevent a equity and solidarity perspective. e practice of parrhesia advocated by Foucault in his later works, appears to be ever more needed as the rst step in critical ability and therefore the social construction of alternatives that can be truly put into place. And it is perhaps this attitude of "speaking truth to power" that inspires the living practices of the zerozero generation , especially the youth rebellions that exploded at the end of 2010 in London as well as in Algeria, Tunisia, Italy and other countries and perhaps soon enough all over Europe
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BETWEENLANDS
Loris Savino and Marco Di Noia.
Loris Savino is a photographer, born 1975 in Milan, where he is based. He started his photographic career with Grazia Neri Agency. From 2006 to 2008 he worked for several international magazines covering Middle East's issues, stories about religious communities and social issues. In 2007 he won Baldoni's prize for a reportage about boxing in Kibera's slum. From 2009 he has been working on long-term and ne art projects. Marco Di Noia is a graphic designer and video-maker. Since 1998 he has worked as motion graphic designer, and started freelancing since 2003. He started his professional life as an interface designer, and in 2001 he moved to the broadcast eld. He keeps himself busy doing design, animations and videos for events, corporate and commercial projects. Since the beginning of his career he has always found energy and time to make personal works in the eld of video, print, and a/v projects; some of them have been exhibited nationally and internationally.
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Since the beginning of 2011, the Mediterranean Sea has been both protagonist and spectator of a unique collective energy in an area always considered the Cradle of Civilization. is energy has generated profound change, triggered by Arab nations and landing at the gates of Europe. e force shocked several countries in search of new identities: Tunisia, Egypt and Libya, echoing into Lampedusa and Greece. e only common denominators: the square, the crowd, the community, and a deep yearning for freedom. BETWEENLANDS is based on this renewed sense of consciousness, dignity and responsibility that has recently spread across the Mediterranean. e story begins with the protagonists: the people, passionately expressing social needs and motivations. Courageous voices echoed through squares, demanding freedom, breaking down regimes and ultimately grasping the protagonist's role of their own history. Change stemmed from the square and destroyed palaces of power: crippled by mankind's frustration, leaving behind wreckages of defunct regimes. e desolation and scars remain active reminders of the atrocities and su ering, standing as symbols of rebirth. rough a collection of videos and images, BETWEENLANDS reveals a true testimony of the past year's political events in the Mediterranean. is story began in Egypt, February 2011, and journeyed through Tunisia, Libya and Lampedusa. e documentations aim to dissect the intensity of the revolutions, describing an evolution of individuals who become a single force. e Arabs, who a er years of censorship and repression, have achieved their purpose: freedom and democracy. e awakening of dignity
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ARCHITECTURE & GEOPOLITICS TODAY.
Stefano Boeri in an interview with Zawia.
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Stefano Boeri, born in 1956, is a Milan-based architect and from April 2011 he is Councillor for Culture, Design and Fashion for the Municipality of Milan. From 2004 to 2007 he was editor in chief of "Domus" international magazine. From 2007 to 2011 he was editor in chief of the international magazine "Abitare". Professor of Urban Design at the Politecnico di Milano, he has taught as visiting professor at Harvard GSD, MIT and Berlage Institute among others. He is the founder of www.multiplicity.it, an international research network dedicated to the study of contemporary urban transformations. Co-author of di erent volumes such as Mutations (Actar, 2000), USE (Skir�, 2002) e Cronache del Abitare (Mondadori, 2007), Biomilano (Corraini, 2011) and author of "Anticitt�" (Laterza, 2011). Stefano Boeri, with his texts and re ections, is a regular contributor to several magazines and newspapers.
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[Zawia] How do we relate your research 'Uncertain States of Europe' to the current political and economic situation in Italy and Europe and its a ect today to existing models of architectural production and cities? [Stefano Boeri] To answer this I need to clarify important points: rstly I believe what is happening now represents what we saw some years ago as the main character of the European city. We had observed the fact that such cities are the result of an overlay of di erent periods, cultures and settlement principles. is overlay is still present, which is why I think European cities di er from other city typologies; they represent supreme positions of various periods of cultures, languages and architecture. e second point refers to another feature of those cities; the fact that the creation of Europe was largely based on foreign culture exchange of typologies. e continent remains alive and the merging of di erent social behaviour from other cultures is clearly evident in contemporary European city life. Here they are somewhat reinterpreted, requiring European cities to absorb like a sponge. Another aspect we explored is the fact that all these cultures and settlements have an amazing density, because when you observe European cities you basically discover a compact environment. is has changed a lot in the last 30 years, because a night satellite-map view clearly outlines what Europe is nowadays. You can also see very well the presence of di erent kinds of cities, which now surrounds all European metropolitan areas. ese are places that are mainly composed of single-
family houses, blocks and shopping malls. A nal point refers to the nature of our research (USE Uncertain States of Europe): we were at a certain point at the end of the last century (about 30 years ago), where it was a plural approach to research. We were working with di erent research groups across Europe, and kept seeing something not very visible at that time: self-organisation. So when you see today's changes in Europe, you basically see the changes in the process of transformation, the `Mutations' [the research title]. It was produced by self-organised groups of people, which for us was a radically new change model, and it's also a model of change opposite to what we were normally thinking of, which is the transformation done by the decision making from the top. Instead, what we saw was that; in relation with di erent kind of problems or expectations, cities were changing due to a group of people who decided to constitute an association, community or institution. At one point they were deciding to change because they had the economical, legal, political resources to do this. is was also changing because the nature of planning of public policies. Finally, the fact that every decision in Europe was undergoing a very complex, rede ned decisionmaking process. All those ve aspects, I believe, answer your question because they are facts which came up when we did the research, and have also arisen today. erefore, from a certain point of view, if Europe at this point is not seen as a political union, as in a continent with a real clear strategy, there is a strong and unbelievable homogeneity in the nature of urban and social environments. From Lisbon to Istanbul and
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Stockholm to Palermo, cities and their way of changing are really similar. erefore, trying to govern these changes are not so di erent. In my opinion, it is still extremely paradox to see how Europe has weakened in terms of capacity to produce foreign policies. For instance, if you think of the political crisis in Greece (considering Greece was Europe's birthplace) this contradiction is related to the fact that this homogeneity was never capable of producing a capacity policy that can represent itself and the Union as one unique continent with a unique strategy. [ Z ] In a recent interview, you mentioned that 30% of world citizens live in informal settlements, how do you see Slums/Favelas in the next 50 years? [ SB ] e evolution of worldwide informal cities is an amazing phenomenon today that will characterise the future of metropolitan environments. We observed di erent phases in our approach based on Western perspective of city evolution. It started in the period a er the Second World War, a time of an attempt to avoid this fact and disregard to forget and an attempt to really neglect their existence. An amazing impact was growing in so many environments with these new informal urban textures as an extremely rapid process. It was interesting for me to observe the indi erent position of architects and urban planners who were absorbed and distracted by ideas of utopian new cities. In Brazil I ran a research called `Sao Paulo Calling', a working group comparing what happened in Sao Paulo in the last 40-50 years with other cities all over the world. In Brazil it is really strange, and amazing, how policies and architectural culture
has forgotten the presence of Favelas, in a time of policy-making and urbanisation that was completely involved in Brazilia; the dream of a completely new urban plan. So for many years we somewhat disregarded this kind of phenomenon from our agendas. en at a certain moment it was becoming impossible to move the gaze from this kind of environment. It was realised that the phenomenon was there with attempts explore ways of reducing and ghting it. ere was a hard struggle to nd the tools to move this phenomenon from the urban environment, mid-80s onwards, and was translated in many attempts to destroy slums from their formal environment and move the population in other social housing areas. For instance, to intervene
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in terms of police order and security issues, this kind of approach was strong and produced severe side-e ects in Rio. However, Favelas were disappearing because they were simply destroyed in some part and were reborn in another part. Favelas are, at the moment, part of our city. We have to be clear that we cannot simply move it from our gaze. At the same time, we cannot think that this problem can be solve with an approach of neglecting the fact that they are so important in our city's evolution, we have to study the positive character of Favelas. In general I dislike the term `Slums', I prefer `Favelas' because it is more open. Favelas from many points of views are opposite to the `Anti-city'. is is because Favelas have social communities that are not considered `ghettos', rather, it is more like a real community mix of di erent cultures. Secondly, I think that sometimes Favelas � such as in Mumbai or Nairobi - are also part of the city where you can see an amazing dynamic of small sized industries; I try to produce in the art cra eld and sometimes in the sustainability elds, food and agriculture. In some way you could say that there is a part of the city where we all see in a period of crisis as extremely dynamic, constantly changing and moving. [ Z ] How do you see "Informality" in Europe? Do you see `Mobile Population' of Europe either the case of the Senti/Roma population or Immigrant communities? Is this population the `Informal' part of Europe? Why? [ SB ] In Europe, informal cities are considered the rst step of immigration, so one of the reasons of their growth is related to the immigration process and globalisation. ese environments are basically the rst place
immigration nds hospitality. In Europe there is a very big di erence because we have informal cities in a di erent form. If you exclude the Roma and Senti population- we don't have large informal settlements, we have more of an archipelago of small settlements, which are growing both on the periphery and the [historical] centre. e ancient part of the city is more capable to withstand new population groups. is has caused big change, so we should not describe it as one process, because what is happening in Milan for example is di erent from Brussels or Rotterdam. So cities are changing, and the possibility of having a city which is composed of a series of additions of di erent population, ethnic groups and communities is evident. Another aspect my `Anti City' book covers is the need recognise the dignity of every community to possibly nd an identity of space. Additionally, it is important to urge the smaller communities to change their way of contributing to the worldwide city community. Ultimately, this should allow an equilibrium between the right to represent themselves and the necessity to change cultural traditions in order to eventually merge communities. [ Z ] How do you see the current Geopolitical situation today in relation to the profession of architects? [ SB ] For many years I have tried to explain the importance of local space; I try to underline how local spaces work like `' e eye of the needle'' for globalisation. We could describe what is happening around us in the last three decades as the globalisation of cultures, information where everything is owing.
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ough this multiplication of growth didn't change the nature of local environment because all these ows need to land sometimes, and they need local nodes. From another point of view, architecture can have the role of representing those local nodes, where the complexity and extension of global ows t the place where they should land. Years ago I wanted to propose a manifesto related to the relation between geopolitics, globalisation and local space for architecture, I ran a competition for young architects in Russia. I was really trying to show what architecture should do in order to capture this complexity. Basically, I was saying that we need extremely sensitive architecture capable of absorbing and interpreting local contexts and concepts everywhere. at means we are observing the gradual end of architects and the formation of a discipline related to a small group of international architects stamping their autograph everywhere. We have to translate and interpret di erent parts of the world in relation to local contexts with some common language. [ Z ] Finally, as someone who has been, for the last years, operating somewhere between architecture and politics, how do you see the relationship between them today? [ SB ] Architecture can produce an excess of knowledge. At times architecture promoted ideas as a method to anticipate the future, and to collect data about con ict. erefore, we are always producing information related to the surface of the space, which has a social utility in itself. I think that architecture is politics in itself with its capacity to read and observe reality. It was important for me because at the end of the
last century many of us were trying to describe what was happening without thinking about the fact that all this could be transposed in the planning activity. Consequently, the autonomy of the research is relative, thus, relating architecture to politics. e second point is that this relation is about the `space-ilisation' of the politics we see nowadays that uses architecture to produce consensus anticipating something that will never happen. Sometimes, architecture can be used to render images and speed up some nancial resources. is is an amazing risk, and the point is to test how architects react. My third point refers to how architecture and politics approach reality, which is not so di erent, and at the same time e ective. We need to be inclusive in order to collect information and design a project. We also need to be exclusive because, ultimately, politicians and architects need to make a decision about space in relation to social issues. is schizophrenia between exclusion and inclusion is another point of similarity
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Architecture And Geopolitics Today. Interview with Stefano Boeri.
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THE BATTLE.
G�raud Soulhiol
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"La Bataille" ( e Battle) 2011 . Propelling pencil 0,3B on white Canson paper 240 x 42 cm
G�raud Soulhiol is a young French artist who lives and works in
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Toulouse. Using the drawing as a means of expression, he questions the architecture, cartography, landscape, proliferation, enumeration and wandering drawn. He recently showed his work at the Salon de Montrouge, in the gallery. Projective City (Paris), and the festival Gamerz 07 (Aix en Provence). www.geraudsoulhiol.com
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` e Battle' is a large-scale illustration made to show, in basic terms, the visual language of war paintings and great epic stories, as does ueen Matilda's preserved tapestry (Bayeux, France). Here, a battle is being played motionless and silently. e opposing sides are positioned behind trees and electric pylons: a ght between nature and civilisation. e mechanical drawing represents deployed armies, echoing the idea of proliferation, conquest and destruction. e viewer is immersed in the chaotic landscape, becoming the visitor of this labyrinthic decoration. e illustration depicts Soulhiol's childhood memories; where the concept of war was sometimes perceived as a game. He replays this battle through his perspective of our world today: a time of profound change
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The Battle. G�raud Soulhiol
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The Battle. G�raud Soulhiol
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THE GREY CITY.
Pier Paolo Tamburelli
Pier Paolo Tamburelli studied architecture at the University of Genoa and at the Berlage Institute in Rotterdam. He collaborated with Domus in the period between 2004-2007. Tamburelli has taught at the PUSA Aleppo (Syria), at the Milan Politecnico, at TUM Munich, and he is currently unit professor at the Engineering Faculty of the University of Genoa and at Berlage Institute. Tamburelli has been the guest editor of OASE 79 James Stirling 1964-1992. A Non-Dogmatic Accumulation of Formal Knowledge.
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Aleppo .
� Giovanna Silva
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I wrote this text in the spring of 2007 a er living and working for three months in Aleppo (Syria). e text tries to generalize the Aleppo situation and to pay attention to a series of cities that are usually forgotten in the contemporary debate. Since 2007 the situation of many "grey cities" � particularly in the Middle East � signi cantly changed. Still I believe a detailed knowledge of the existing condition of the grey cities to be fundamental to imagine their transformation. "Change" can only be based on reality. "Change" will happen only if the elites of the grey city will start to look at the grey city without illusions and without contempt. I would like to thank Andrea Zanderigo for his fundamental contribution to some of the ideas expressed in this text. .() . , .� �- � �� . �� . ) . � � .
[01] e grey city is the city without qualities: it is big but not huge, it is poor but not desperate, it is growing but not booming. [02] e population of the grey city is between 1 million and 10 million inhabitants. e grey city is in a country with a GDP [per capita] higher than 3.000 USD and lower than 13.000 USD. [03] Capitals are not grey city. Tabriz and Guadalajara are grey cities. Sao Paulo and Bucharest are not. [04] e grey city is not on the sea.
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The Grey City. Pier Paolo Tamburelli
[05] e grey city is not tropical. Winter is cold in the grey city. Summer is hot. [06] e aggregate population of the grey city is in the order of 200 million inhabitants. A er China, India, USA and Indonesia, the grey city is the h most populated country in the world. [07] e grey city is the product of a globalization without heroes. In the grey city Philippines housekeepers take care of retired Egyptian lawyers. Mediocre Polish engineers teach mathematics to the spoiled kids of the Indonesian bourgeoisie. [08] Like in a Richter monochrome, the grey of the grey city is dense. e grey city has a history that has not been erased. e grey city is not losing identity. It has nothing to do with tabula rasa. e identity of the grey city is not lost, but blurred. [09] e grey city has been colonized. Usually in the grey city colonialism was French, if not Spanish, Belgian, Italian. In the most unbelievable grey cities colonialism was German. [10] e grey city is na�ve. Toothpaste still smells of strawberry in the grey city. [11] In the grey city people is young. [12] e grey city is un-metropolitan, and it will always be. Does not matter the increase of its population.
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[13] e grey city is a province without a capital, too big to refer to other cities, too marginal to be noticed by the rest of the world. [14] Public transport is by bus. Trains survive as pure extravaganza. Underground is out of discussion. Half of the cars are cabs. Cabs are yellow (this demonstrates that, for certain aspects, the grey city is far more civilized than contemporary European cities). [15] Buses relate the grey city with other cities. Minibuses relate the grey city with the countryside. [16] e failure of cumbersome, rigid technologies is balanced in the grey city by the success of light, exible ones. As much as trains and xed phones fail, minibuses and cell phones success. [17] e grey city is a place where to come back. Emigrants come back to the grey city when they think they have enough money to venture business in the grey city. [18] Money comes back to the grey city by Western Union. [19] e grey city is a safe investment. It is the only escape from bubbles. e grey city is a refugecommodity. e grey city does not know booms or crises.
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The Grey City. Pier Paolo Tamburelli
[20] e grey city is a market. ere is a complete group of products made for the grey city. Iranian and Romanian cars: Saipa, Dacia, ... [21] e grey city is not an industrial city. e grey city tried to become an industrial city for a while, but it did not happen. [22] e grey city is at ease with post-modernism. Having been modern only for a short while [usually a er modernism already expired], the grey city has de nitely no fear of postmodernism. [23] Without a serious attempt with modernism, post-modernism is, for the grey city, more like a prosecution of a pre-industrial approach. Here lies the complication of the grey city, and the opportunity as well. [24] e grey city is made of the inexhausted repetition of the same ve storeys apartment block and two storeys house. Somewhere in this sea of houses something emerges: it can be ugly skyscrapers or dusty mountains, un nished cathedrals or crumbled fortresses. [25] e ve storeys matter includes everything. Except for power plants and oil re neries factories are not distinguishable from the rest. Factories are just ve storeys buildings with li s on the facades. ey accommodate generic workforce ready for every kind of cheap work.
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[26] Two-storeys urban matter is everything that is not able to reach the h level. It can be informal settlements or historical tissue. In the grey city ve storeys means (at least) decent and two storeys means poor. Of course the historical city is poor. [27] In the grey city it is still fashionable to sell medieval houses in the centre to buy apartments in the periphery. e grey city is not learning from the experience of the western city. Suburbanization will happen exactly the same way. Gentri cation, if ever, will happen exactly the same way. [28] ere is a European quarter in the grey city. Usually the European quarter has been planned during the colonial period. e European quarter is, since its realization, the fancy of the grey city. e elite of the grey city lives there. [29] Informal settlements are not the majority of the grey city. As usual, the grey city dislikes tragedy. [30] e grey city is Athens less the Parthenon (not less the Acropolis). [31] ere are no le overs in the grey city. e grey city is the nal confutation of the miserable superstition of the non-places. Non-places do not exist. Every spot of the grey city is lled with uses, stories, and dirt. Everywhere in the grey city is possible to detect traces. Concerning the urbanism of the grey city, Aristotelianism is still right: urbs abhorret vacuum.
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[32] Planning is still at work in the grey city as an extremely basic order: concentric infrastructure and the repetition of the same block in more or less uniform grids. [33] e disaster of European planning for the grey city took place a er the end of the colonial period. Europeans destroyed the grey city not as rulers but as advisors. [34] ere are gated communities in the grey city. Mainly for people retiring to the grey city a er making money abroad. Somehow they cannot live anymore in the grey city. Inside of the enclosures where they live, the inhabitants of these gated communities are condemned to a desperate double nostalgia: nostalgia of Belgium [or Michigan] and nostalgia of the grey city as it has never been. [35] Is the grey city expanding? e more the di erence in wealth among a limited elite of cities and the rest of the world will grow, the more the European and American cities will become grey. Are Napoli, St. Louis, Leipzig on their way to become grey cities? It is possible to use the grey city to understand large pieces of cities that are not grey: Mexico City? Mumbai? A large part of these megacities is made of grey matter. And arguably, in these cities, the percentage of grey parts will increase with the increase of wealth. [36] It is not possible for a city to become grey just because of pure decadence. Rome, Rio, Moscow, Istanbul, Berlin all declined at various times, but never became grey cities. What protected these cities is, surprisingly enough, just their architecture.
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[37]
e intelligence of the grey city is hidden.
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[38] e grey city possesses an architectural order. It has a structure. Contrary to contemporary superstition about cities, the grey city is understandable in terms of architecture. [39] It is possible to understand the grey city. And it is possible to understand it by analysing its architecture. Still the only form of knowledge able to tell something about cities. Still the only way to decode distances, positions of entrances, number of oors, width of streets. Let say, context? A er all, context? Architecture as a way to understand contexts? [40] To understand the grey city is not charity. e grey city has the potential to suggest amazing urban solutions. e grey city is the most challenging test case for contemporary architecture. e grey city o ers the extreme experimental condition for contemporary architecture. [41] e grey city does not understand avant-garde. You may be avant-garde as you like, no one will notice it. So please no polemics. [42] Given the relative lack of other luxury, the possible quality of the buildings of the grey city is space. (even if the real passion of the inhabitants of the grey city is decoration)
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[43] Architecture for the grey city should be a space-intensive, labourintensive commodity, using relatively simple and cheap technologies. [44] Architecture for the grey city has to be humble. As humble as necessary for a city where people are still happy to camp in the thin strips of "park" running along the highway to have a barbecue on Sunday [Friday]. [45] Architecture for the grey city should not care about authorship. It just has to work. Architecture for the grey city should be able to learn from every possible source. In the grey city it is possible to crack architecture as any other so ware. It is allowed to copy. [46] e grey city shows a possibility for a simple approach to the resources of architecture. A possibility to rethink architecture as public knowledge. In the grey city to produce architecture out of existing architecture is not an allusion to a personal memory; it is just a pragmatic application of available resources. In the grey city postmodernism nally makes sense because of forced austerity. [47] Possibly it is exactly its openness to further developments, the intimate accessibility of its code, what de nes good architecture. Solutions that can be de-coded and re-coded.
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[48] Is it possible to imagine such an easy and cheap strategy as: building the city through public buildings that works exactly the same way as other good buildings already existing somewhere else? Is this a possible program for the architecture of the grey city? [49] Roman cities in the Near East and North Africa (Apamea, Bosra, Djemila, Djerash, Leptis Magna, Palmyra, Timgad) provide a possible model for the grey city. Standard architecture for amazing urbanism. Architecture deprived of any ambition apart from performing into the city. But architecture, nothing less than architecture. And for all kind of buildings. Roman architects were humble enough to believe that all parts of the city -except housing- deserved architecture. [50] In principle all of these Roman cities are the same. ere is no claim for identity. As soon the local aristocrats have money, they improve the list of the available facilities. And the facilities do not appear in the city. Buildings have no exterior. No character. e city is a machine that needs no explanations, it just has to work. It is just a collection of rooms at disposal for citizens. [51] e city is made of the relations among the places occupied by the di erent public buildings. Given that space is only internal space, buildings can happen wherever in the grid. e grid just preserves the possibility for buildings to happen, to be reachable. ere is no rule for the placement. e grid is just the most basic tool to have a bit of order for a residential city that is supposed without quality from the very beginning. Public buildings can fall everywhere, just as meteors.
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The Grey City. Pier Paolo Tamburelli
[52] Is the grey city a tool to understand the Roman city? Is it possible to measure the perfect performance of the Roman city against the dusty in nitude of the grey city? What about types, if merged in the endless grey city? Types without character? Is it possible to develop a critique of the neoclassical (from Boullee to Rossi) understanding of types starting for the grey city? To go back to a Roman understanding of types through the grey city? [53] Is the grey city the perfect location for a contemporary classicism? For classic, I mean a tradition that is immediately public, common. Something used just because of its intimate e ciency. Not classic in terms of a tradition, or even worse our tradition, but classic as universal. Classic as something that is daring enough to think in terms of majority: architecture for the grey city is architecture for the big numbers, architecture for all (Architecture for all! Something that is as honest and ridiculous as the title of a heavy metal song). Classic means in general: Brazilian solutions repeated in Morocco, Rumanian technology applied in Pakistan
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CHANGE: Architecture and Engineering
in the Middle East, 2000 to Present.
Hassan Radoine
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Hassan Radoine is currently the Head of the Architectural Engineering Department
at University of Sharjah, UAE. A former Fulbright Scholar, he holds a M.Sc. (2003) and Ph.D. (2006) in Architecture from University of Pennsylvania. As a Prince of Wales' Scholar, he received an M.Phil. in Architecture from the Prince of Wales Institute of Architecture in London (1997). His rst Diploma of Architecture is from the `Ecole Nationale d'Architecture' in Rabat (1993). He has held several senior positions and was a key architect-planner responsible for establishing the conservation strategy for UNESCO World Heritage City of Fez. He has been an active professional consultant for international bodies such as UNESCO, ICOMOS, ICCROM, Aga Khan Award, and World Bank. His research interest includes eory & Criticism of Architecture, Urban Conservation, Islamic Architecture, and Urbanism in the MENA region. He published several chapters in books, journal papers, and technical reports.
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Change: architecture and engineering in the : Middle East is an exhibition organized by the American Institute of Architects. .( AIA) Image courtesy of AIA, New York Chapter.
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Change: architecture and engineering in the Middle East is an exhibition organized by the American Institute of Architects (AIA, New York Chapter) and curated by the author of this paper. It is presented at the Center for Architecture in New York om February 22nd to June 23, 2012. e exhibition explores how designers, architects and engineers have translated the rapid change as well as the rich geographical, cultural and economic elements of the Middle East in the making of a contemporary architecture and engineering since 2000.
Introduction
Despite the fact that it has been essentialized as one monotonous cultural construct, the Middle East has been throughout history a strategic zone of continuous cultural, religious, political and economic encounters. e encounter of the Middle East with the neighboring West prompted a continuous modernization and industrialization since 1900, and has mutated its cityscapes from traditional urban fabrics to modern megalopolises such as Cairo, Istanbul, Tehran, Baghdad, Casablanca, and Damascus. However, with the discovery of oil in the Gulf region around the seventies, the fast changing Middle Eastern built environment will take another turn with erecting entirely new high-rise cityscapes-- in time record--in the Arabian Desert such as Dubai, Riyadh, Doha, and Abu Dhabi. Accordingly, the architectural production in the Middle East ranges from preservation of heritage, social housing, governmental buildings, and touristic resorts to mega theme parks, tallest skyscrapers, knowledge cities, sustainable cities, and arti cial islands. e term "Change" is, therefore, very revealing of the continuous architectural and urban transformations taking place in a world that is still reigned by multiple dichotomies, contradictions, contrasts, and perplexing old and new images. In addition, the current Arab Spring that would certainly have an impact on architectural and urban making is worth considering when dealing with change in the Middle East.
Change in the Middle East
Since the 70s, di erent governments have launched di erent programs to meet the growing social urban needs such as housing and infrastructure. As noticed in the last Arab Spring, most voices of change came from urban areas, and in cities where economic and social disparities are more exposed and felt. is is exposed through the number and size of urban slums that plagued all Middle Eastern cities creating their own informal urbanism--escaping the heavy technocratic arsenal of urban rules. is is a signi cant sign of poverty with 25% of Middle-Eastern and North-African urban population lives below poverty line. In the case of Gulf States, the cities did not pursue a long tradition of urbanization but instead have been the result of more a tra c engineering and parachuted architectural theme parks. On the other hand, fostering some of the most signi cant UNESCO's world heritage monuments and
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Change: Architecture and Engineering in the Middle East. Hassan Radoine
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sites, with rich archeological remains and living intangible heritages, the Middle East is also a place of a fast ongoing globalization. is contrast between the resilience of heritage and the overwhelming contemporary change makes the current Middle East a place worthy of presentation. Hence, the conventional center of the city becomes but a convergent point of multiple developments meagerly observing the rigid master planning of the 80s and 90s. e city succumbed, consequently, to its own faith of dwelling its unsheltered rather than being the ideal city as planned by technocrats. Whilst it is risky to synthesize the built environment into a clear-cut categorization, the current practice of architecture and engineering in the Middle East has followed hitherto some patterns that ought to be explored according to its diverse economies and geographies. Despite the fact that there are several clustering of regions of the Middle East by United Nations, World Bank, UNESCO, and so forth, the clustering explored herein is more creative for the sake of grouping di erent submitted projects in order to attain a certain meaningful classi cation by geography and typology.
Regional overview of Change
Gulf Region: Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates (UAE), Qatar, Bahrain, and Oman: Oil production has accelerated development in the Gulf States. Global architecture and engineering rms have contributed to projects in these cities, producing a broad range of typologies: mixed-use towers, theme parks, beach resorts, universities, and cultural institutions. Other building types, such as workers' housing, have been equally vital to the realization of the new urban fabric, though lesser known. Turkey, Iran and Iraq: e rapid growth in Turkey, Iran and Iraq has engendered new urban forms, including large social housing projects that have an immense impact on their cityscapes. Consequently, the "ideal city" as planned by technocrats and politicians has succumbed to convergent developments. Architecture within these powerful territories has been subject to an enduring nationalist ideology, from the powerful symbolism of Attaturk and Shah to Saddam. Among the di erent public institutions such as courts, hospitals, authority headquarters, libraries, and national banks, it is striking to see how neo-colonial styles have become intertwined with Neo-classicism and Art Deco to assert an architectural language of power.
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Change: Architecture and Engineering in the Middle East. Hassan Radoine
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Inside the exhibition . Image courtesy of Hassan Radoine
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Sham: Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, and the Palestinian Territories: Sham's major cities are Damascus, Aleppo, Beirut, and Nablus, and arguably, Jerusalem. e urban centers of these countries, with small populations and economies, have always been volatile with continuous population movement and instability. Contemporary architecture and urbanism is prevalent in these urban areas, but since 2000, other cities, such as Amman, have gained a reputation for careful master planning. All Sham's cities are struggling with the crisis of adequate social housing and urban sprawl. North Africa: Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, and Egypt: With its proximity to Europe, North Africa has generated an architecture and urbanism that is an amalgam of the distinct forms and vocabularies from the many cultures that have inhabited its lands. e region has undergone a rapid urbanization since its countries gained their independence, creating new urban and architectural challenges. North African governments responded in the 1970s, creating housing and infrastructure programs to meet the needs of its growing urban population, yet cities such as Cairo, Tunis, Algiers, and Casablanca remain places of great economic and social disparities. In general, these cities have been relatively immune to globalization, maintaining an urban fabric of human scale. Israel: Since its founding in 1948, Israel has been viewed by its neighboring Middle Eastern countries as a Western country. e architecture of Israel is more modernist in style, re ecting a character typical to nascent states. is pervasive style makes Israel's architecture less contextual and regional when compared with neighboring Eastern countries where identity is at the center of architectural debate. ere are two main types of architecture in Israel: one that seeks to symbolize the legitimacy of the modern State, and the other that deals with the daily lives of a newly settled urban population. e continuous immigration and formation of new settlements has exacerbated the order of its cities and has created the ongoing need for high-density housing projects
`... the term "Change" is, therefore, very revealing of the continuous architectural and urban transformations taking place in a world that is still reigned by multiple dichotomies, contradictions, contrasts, and perplexing old and new images.'
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Change: Architecture and Engineering in the Middle East. Hassan Radoine
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RE-USE: The Construction of a Common
Good Through the Temporary Re-use of "Left-Over" Urban Settings.
Isabella Inti
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Isabella Inti Born in 1971 in Milan and in 1997 graduated in Architecture at `Politecnico di Milano' University. Has worked for several o ces in Milan as Boeri Studio and Studio Macchi Cassia and abroad at WEST 8, Rotterdam and Tischer b�ro in Berlin. In 1998 she quali ed as "landscape expert" in Rome. In 1999 has been urban planner research grant for `Regione Lombardia' local authority and in 2000 urban planner advisor for IReR Institut of Research. In 2001 she has joined Multiplicity (www.multiplicity.it), a network of urban planners, sociologists, photographers, lmmakers which develop research over territorial transformation and she collaborated to realize national and international exhibitions. Since 2005 she is PhD doctor in Urban Planning and Public Policies at IUAV, University of Venice with the dissertation "urban residual areas /temporary actions", which has included a research period through some USA Universities as Berkeley, Pratt Institute and UCLA. Since 2005 She teaches Urban Planning at `Politecnico di Milano' University and she co-directs the research laboratory `Multiplicity Lab' overseeing relevant researches on living conditions and landscape planning. From 2008 she promotes `Temporiuso' (www. temporiuso.org) an action-research project with propose of reactivate existing and abandoned buildings with associations stat up projects, granting temporary use contracts in a rent control. She is also activist and president of ADA Stecca a network of cultural associations with which since 2001 she experiments tools and modalities of public participation in the design of the Garibaldi/Repubblica open spaces in Milan (www.lastecca.org).
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"Drilled Architectures?" � � Image Courtesy of: Isabella Inti
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What are the strategies for reconstructing liberated territories a er the "Arab Spring"? How to deal with public and private buildings, monuments, squares and public gardens which bear witness to the tyrannical domination of a deposed political and economic class? Urban skeletons which have been blackened by bombs and drilled by bullets replace landmark buildings of a deposed regime: the NDP (National Democratic Party)/Hosni Mubrak government buildings of Cairo or Mu'ammar Ghedda 's Bab Al Azizya complex in Tripoli. Architects, urban planners, designers and activists face a dilemma: demolish and rebuild new landmark buildings or rethink and reenable those sites for public value. e third possibility� to leave them blank as monuments and witnesses of the past� is not viable. Choosing the second way requires proposing the strategy of temporarily re-using abandoned spaces to the local population and new ruling elite. Buildings, urban areas and open spaces are subject to cycles of high and low utilisation, with moments of transition, uncertainty and immobility. Financial instability, de-industrialisation, political changes� as occurred in Algeria, Bahrain, Egypt, Tunisia, Yemen, Jordan, Djibouti, Libya and Syria� o en diminish the former intended use, leaving a "time gap", even when there aren't new projects. e causes of delay in redeveloping abandoned spaces are varied, o en due to the high cost of environmental remediation and redevelopment, political instability (political oppositions and protests for local projects), or slowness in approving restoration plans. In this "time-in-between" it is possible to implement temporary projects and activities (use ad interim)1 , o ering new urban regeneration scenarios. A closer look at many vacant lots across European cities, with no current de nitive use, shows us how, in the absence of real estate development or government plans, many areas have become a testing ground for di erent populations. ese include new forms of art, music, pop culture, as well as the place for start-up associations related to local community projects, short-term student housing, events and informal trade markets. e uncertainty and openness of such places has catalysed new forms of cities (Oswalt 2003)2 , inspired temporary activities, self-organised informal economies and brought new services to local contexts.
1 "Constituting the Interim", the Interim Constitution (the in between status) is a research of STEALTH.unlimited (Ana Dzokic, Marc Neelen) and Iris de Kievith, launched to provide a frame of shared rules and tools for actors who initiate temporary reuse projects and pre guring scenarios of urban transformation. e publication of the research is ongoing and has been started by invitation of Optrek/laboratorium van de tussentijd, 2010. 2 From 2001 to 2003, the international and interdisciplinary research "Urban Catalyst", directed by Philipp Oswalt, Klaus Overmeyer and Philipp Misselwitz of theTU Berlin University, has examined strategies for temporary use in ve European cities, Berlin, Amsterdam, Napoli, Wien and Helsinki.
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RE-USE . Isabella Inti
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Unexpected uses have o en accelerated processes of economic recovery3. e empty spaces can be considered urban reserves for testing collective dreams4. Introducing temporary projects in old buildings allows design experimentation, sharing knowledge of di erent populations, as well as the sedimentation of local economies, fertile (social) capital for longer lasting urban regeneration processes. Berlin's temporary reuse space is Volkpalast (Palast der Republik/ the Palace of the People) -�the parliamentary seat (and symbol) of the German Democratic Republic (DDR). e political reuni cation a er 1989 where Berlin was accompanied by radical changes of an end to East vs West citizen subsidisation, and a delayed collapse of industries leading to economic free fall and high unemployment. Berlin's urban fabric today still bears the signs of this collapse with its fragmented and open nature. Dense urban areas are situated between vast open spaces and wastelands. e expectation of massive economic and demographic growth that would follow the reinstallation of the German Federal Government fuelled an intense, developer driven urbanism which the city tried to control through rigid planning rules based on c19 high-density urban typologies. ough, in early 2000 it became clear that this expected growth failed to materialise. Vast remaining inner city wastelands, buildings, high vacancy rates of new housing developments, o ces and commercial spaces, led to the real estate market downfall. Today, developers prefer to "wait for better times" while Berlin's virtually collapsed economy adds further strain on municipal budgets whose action has been tide by strict national scal restrictions. Urban planners, economists, researchers and activists for radical reassessment of current planning and development models could consider this crisis as a chance. roughout the 1990s, uncertainty and openness helped generate a unique culture of informal and temporary uses that occurred mostly outside prescribed planning processes. From 2001 Urban Catalyst o ce5 together with the Senate of Berlin developed the (Zwischennutzungs)fond concept (round table for temporary use), which will bring together the municipal government, large property owners, investors and temporary activists in order to discuss possibilities of temporary use as an urban development device. Such discussions will help promote an understanding of the advantages and potential of these new instruments into a strategic planning process. In this socio-cultural, economic and urban planning context we will observe the temporary reuse Volkpalast project. In 2002, the building was home to art installations, a hostel and numerous public meetings edited by the architects and researchers of Urban Catalyst. One of the project installations, run by the Raumlaborberlin collective, is the much-discussed "Der Berg" ( e Mountain). Here, Raumlaborberlin not only assumed artistic direction, but also developed a "Philosopher's Walk" and "Gasthof Bergkristall", where guests could spend the night on-site at the Schlossplatz in the heart of Berlin. Despite the cultural fermentation generated by these public activities, in 2003 the Government demolished the Palast der Republik and removed that symbol. Additionally, the legacy was that the group of activists, architects, researchers, artists and citizens was strong enough to trigger discussion on
3 Isabella Inti, "Spazi Urbani Residuali e Azioni Temporanee, un'occasione per ride nire i territori, gli attori e le Politiche urbane/ "residual urban spaces and temporary actions, an opportunity to rede ne the territories, stakeholders and Urban Policies ",doctoral dissertation DrPPT_Dottorato in Piani cazione Territoriale e Politiche Pubbliche del Territorio, IUAV_ Istituto Universitario di Architettura di Venezia, 2005. 4 transparadiso (Barbara Holub, Paul rajakovics), "Vacancies and urban reserves" in "Temporary urban spaces", ed. Birkhauser, 2007 5 see footnote n.2
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temporarily reusing abandoned spaces. As a result, they opened public policies to bring new activities into old public spaces. Another example is the temporary reuse of former General Stores Falck in Sesto San Giovanni (Milan's outskirts), witnesses of an industrial past run by oligarchic families. Here, a er few initial pilot projects, the Municipality of Sesto San Giovanni welcomed the proposal of Temporiuso6 researchers (www. temporiuso.org) �supported by multiplicity.lab, DiAP Politecnico di Milano, to temporarily reuse [2011-13] the former Magazzini Generali Falck (General Stores Falck). is became Made in Mage: "a hub for the creative, sustainable, production and Industrial heritage enhancement". In Sesto San Giovanni, Italy's former Stalingrad, around one million ve thousand square meters of abandoned areas are still waiting on funding for remediation and permanent conversion. Public administration has posed a challenge to promoters and cultural events planners, leaving pending projects related to prestigious international competitions and the new Falck masterplan [signed by architect Renzo Piano and the PGT (Piano di Governo del Territorio �Government Plan of the Territory)]. Ultimately, Made in Mage supports sustainable fashion and design, encourages reusing empty or underused spaces, and combines new production activities with the enhancement of industrial archaeological heritage of Sesto. From January 2011 to December 2013 the Municipality of Sesto San Giovanni provides for 15 projects selected by a "Creativity Call": a space for ateliers, studios and laboratories on free loan, management and start-up costs for 3 years. e project ��conceived by Temporiuso� is managed by ARCI Milano and with the involvement of experts in critical fashion, sustainable production, urban events and active citizenship, in close collaboration with the Municipality of Sesto. e winners are: Al�ta, Arted�, Atelass�, Alice Cateni, E emeridi, FabbricantidiGioie, Nicoletta Fasani, GarbageLAB, GHOSTZIP, LAAFIA, RiCreazioni, Semi di sesamo, Tabata&Pez, Tea_TIME. To invest in these projects does not mean for public administration to abdicate nal plans, but to experiment practices, functions and emerging economies, which could then regenerate parts of the city.
6 Temporiuso is an action-research project initiated in 2008 by cantieri isola association in partnership with precare.it group, today united in Temporiuso.net, under the patronage of Department of Culture of the Province of Milan and Territory Development Department and the City of Milan. Since 2009 the research has had the support and contribution of researchers and trainees of the laboratory multiplicity. lab, DiAP Politecnico di Milano and has been launched temporiuso.net, a network of local and international partnerships with associations, activists and researchers. e project is addressed, for the moment, to the Municipality and the Province of Milan and it proposes to use the existing public and private buildings and open spaces, voids, abandoned or underused, to reactivate them with projects related to the world of culture and associations, of handicra s and small business, temporary hospitality for students and youth tourism, with temporary use contracts in rent control.
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"(...) For me it is very exciting to see today the Magazzini Generali Falck transformed into "Made in mage-incubator of fashion and sustainable design", also because I saw this space when it was a factory, where approximately 300 women were working there. So this temporary reuse project of a historical structure of the city with a new youth and employment function, I think it is extraordinarily important for our administration(...). As a temporary reactivation will last three years, Of course around here is rising the Falck masterplan, so I think that in that context, this project will later nd its nal location". Giorgio Oldrini � Mayor of Sesto San Giovanni ese intervention tactics are comparable to the `anticipatory architecture' and `bene cial change' of Cedric Price7, also detectable in Fun Palace. is project designed for the agit-prop theatre director, Joan Littlewood, whose brief for a show allowed the audience themselves to became players� was the perfect foil for testing Price's ideas on interactive environments that put users in charge. Price's approach perhaps most clearly embodies the role of the architect as spatial agent. What vision, purposes and results do we suggest, or even activate, in our urban environments? Economic and urban planning aims for regeneration through temporary reuse projects i.e. redevelopment of the building patrimony, subtracting vandalism, containing land use and possibly reintroducing a production cycle during the "time in between" of abandoned buildings or spaces. is would serve as a "free-zone and testing zone" (Breek, de Graad 2001), to look at new forms of cohabitation, self-management of living and working spaces: "(...) If the new projects and activities are successful, well, here we can bene t from new urban spaces and activities, otherwise we always have time to go back (De Klerk, 2008)". e social goals visible in many existing temporary reuse projects will be the ability to accommodate people from di erent cultures or disciplines and consequently exchange knowledge and leaving behind social capital sedimentation. ose buildings could become urban reserves (Temel 2007) to test new economies for the basis of rede ning a collective imaginary. A nal consideration concerns our role as planners, architects and social workers. In a context where individual trajectories are on the move, can you pursue a profession that teaches building spaces with no time-use? How can we adapt our design skills to the speed of the changing needs of contemporary society? We should perhaps take this "transit of people and places as an opportunity to renew our design tools" (Saskia van Stein 2010). Some examples of similar projects in Europe and the rst experiments in Milan TempoRiuso research provide some tools. Methodological suggestions included: launching competitions for ideas behind the reuse of abandoned areas, creating an accessible database to match supply vs demand, and identifying a management model through a "temporary use desk". Finally, the hope of this research, combined with ZAWIA's open call for contributions and international researchers and activists, is to demand a better synergy and ensure temporary reuse practices are part of public policy agendas for Arab cities, considering the management model appropriate to the local context
7 Cedric Price, <Life Conditioning>, Architectural Design, 36 ,October 1966, p 483
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EMPOWERING THE MIGRANT: A Paradigm Shift in Migration & Life After Death of the Architect. : .
uentin Seik
uentin Seik was born in South London and raised on the Dorset coast, he is an Architect, designer, and writer currently living and working in Melbourne, Australia. In his previous role at LCE Architects he worked on a number of large, high pro le projects in the UK, North Africa and the Middle East. He was also an invited studio critic at both the Architectural Association in London and at the University of Brighton, and he exhibited his work both in the UK and Internationally.
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"Belief in the signi cance of architecture is premised on the notion that we are, for better or worse, di erent people in di erent places--and on the conviction that it is architecture's task to render vivid to us who we might ideally be." Alain de Botton e subject of `change', like that of `time' or `nature' is innately vast. It is a theme generally explored in the macro, yet its impact is felt on the micro scale without a clear understanding of forces that shape the minutiae of our existences. Change is paradoxically both deeply empowering and inherently divisive. Its pursuance, or otherwise, is the core ideology that separates the two opposing political factions in most Western economies. USA's conservative Republicans resist change to maintain the status quo, whilst Democrats seek a progressive agenda of change. is political fault line means that questions of change typically fall into electoral cycles of varying years depending on the country, state or region. Yet, whilst these are important areas of understanding, this essay focuses on a larger cyclical trend. Migration is, like change, primarily studied and recorded on the macro scale, but deeply felt in the micro scale with personal experiences weighing heavily on human responses to the subject. For this reason, it is inherently an issue of signi cant political importance. Reams of data, statistics and reports are dedicated to pointing out migration trends, but these numbers unsatisfactorily account for an emotionally charged topic for all participants. is engagement makes migration an interesting vehicle for understanding socio-economic change, its roots and likely impact on tomorrow's world. Capitalism's economic model� to keep pro ts rising year on year in a nite world� requires a uid labour pool for investment; transcending geographical and political boundaries by moving operations to cheaper labour markets. is can hugely damage towns, cities, regions and even whole countries. Consequently, the political leverage gained by companies with the power to move operations has further fed the current rotten culture of corporate irresponsibility and widespread social injustice. ese links between the movement of people and wider societal concerns, and the impact people's increased transience has on building and maintaining communities makes it highly relevant for architects to study. Having recently emigrated from the UK to Australia, it is also a personal motive to explore this subject. More so, I have a professional need to understand how external pressures will shape our cities of tomorrow and how to steer these in positive directions. As a newly quali ed architect, I am thrust into a profession in crisis, with the role of architects eroding to the point that many question its future. But perhaps there is hope. e world's most vulnerable societies are being failed by capitalism. us, we increasingly need to understand the macro pressures exerting a crushing in uence on our profession. is may unravel new opportunities to solve such problems on a micro scale, connecting with needs of ordinary people, and with that relationship restored, begin to build stronger, healthier societies.
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Mass migration has existed throughout human history. Since the 19th century, a growing percentage of migrants have moved out of free will, as opposed to being coerced or forced to leave their homeland. ese last two centuries have also seen transportation costs for long distances fall dramatically, causing an increase in immigration numbers. During this time, migration has been mainly driven by a single factor; the will of individuals to improve their own, or their family's, life. is desire may be a consequence of many reasons; whether the need to ee con ict or persecution, or seeking preferable economic circumstances. Most of the 60 million Europeans who immigrated to North America between 1820 and 1920 did so to escape poverty. At this time immigration was overwhelmingly seen as a positive for the US, with abundant space, required an entirely new labour force, both highly skilled and those with practical trades in order to build an economic power from the ground up. However, there comes a point in all mass migrations where the quality (i.e. the value of skills in the host country's labour market) of the average immigrant is lower than that of the o en better educated native-born labour. is results in either the host country putting up barriers to entry to protect the native populace, or that these later immigrants face substantially lower incomes. e consequential capital wealth inequalities cause deep societal ri s and harm the integration process of immigrants. Stripping developing countries' of not only their `best minds', but also of many useful skilled workers, is hugely detrimental to their economic and social development. is is exaggerated by migrants ploughing life savings into criminal hands and black market entrepreneurs rather than back into their home economies. Given the vast disparity in wealth and, more importantly, education and skills, levels between the First and ird worlds, it is unclear how we can ever return to valuable migration to the host country. erefore, a radical rethink of how we approach the migration issues is required to try and bridge this divide and empower developing nations to develop sustainably with greater social equality.
e Delicate Balance of Immigration
A Paradigm Shi in Migration
e 21st century has seen unprecedented sea-changes in economic, political and social systems. We are living in uniquely challenging times, where global instability of money markets makes predicting future trends very di cult. Many observers have used the 1930s' Great Depression as a guide to how economic and social forces, during prolonged economic decline, will shape our world. e spectre of the Second World War looms over this period of history. While the global structural problems of the 1930s, particularly those in Germany or Japan, had a signi cant in uence on the road to war, it is presumptuous to speculate that the current economic crisis will lead to con ict on such a horri c scale. Yet it is fairly apparent that it will profoundly change our current world. Whether, for example, Greece is bailed out and stays in the European Union or defaults on its debts and sets out its own path, what is almost certain is that it will be a very di erent place in ten years time. Even if we assume that this global economic depression will not lead to global con ict as in the Great Depression, history demonstrates that these upheavals will have similar signi cant rami cations for migration patterns. Given such wealth disparities between the developed and the developing world, what is also clear is that the number of people looking to migrate to developed countries for a better standard of living will continue to rise. is situation neither helps the host country's problematic immigrant in ux and border protection costs,
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or the country le behind losing their labour force's best talent required to drive economic growth. ese two opposing agendas, each unsustainable in their own right, are headed on a collision course. e one universal truth of migration is that it ows towards the money. For the past two centuries migration has owed towards money: the West. e gap in wealth and living standards widened signi cantly during the 20th century, increasing the desire for people to emigrate. e ow is inexorable and the sooner we realise this, the better. e only way to in uence the ow of people is to change the ow of income. Paradigm societal shi s occur when the whole society needs to adjust to inequalities that stretch the fabric of social cohesion to breaking point. Change, o en radical, is the inevitable consequence of shortterm thinking and governance that does little to combat the spectre of social injustice.
A Global Phenomenon
` e world is shrinking', a clich� we hear all too frequently describing advances in technology and its impact on bringing geographically separate people together. Yet, it is also a falsehood. Can we say for example that because Skype exists, the impact of all working age males leaving Pakistani villages to work on Middle Eastern construction sites is anything other than detrimental to their communities? Of course we can't. We can only guess the impact of absent father gures on the children growing up in these places. Technology can only truly `shrink' the world by making it a more equal place for its inhabitants. Cities like London formed by gradually expanding, swallowing hamlets, villages and towns until being absorbed into one urban mass and a large singular identity. Western cities in general have swelled, urban fabrics have evolved, and buildings have hybridized; accommodating new peoples, cultures, and ways of urban existence. It is tempting to think of the migration ow as one that happens from East to West. Indeed it has been the case for so long that this complacency is understandable. However, the current instabilities in global nancial markets are creating unprecedented exponential uctuations in migration in previously relatively stable Western societies. Communities are typically formed by people nding conditions stable enough to put down roots, and form social bonds with others. ere is a theme of permanence that pervades them, which is threatened by people's increased transience. Yet, in many Western cities, voids exist where ties within communities and a sense of shared experience and civic duty have broken down. is dysfunction is visible in wealthy and poor areas alike, with swathes of Western cities seeming homogenous and their uniqueness only expressed by increasingly Disney- ed tourist attractions. Globalisation has been with us for some time, but its impact on people's geographical transience was relatively limited in the West as local, regional and national economies have been generally bene cial enough not to warrant large-scale migrations. Now, as the consequences of the Global Financial Crisis deepen, people react by looking to pastures, searching for better economic circumstances and sometimes for salvation. As the rising super-powers of China, India and Brazil have seen increased urbanisation within their own borders and their wealth grows, inevitably the ow of migrants will shi towards them. But how will countries with vast borders and huge populations cope with this new migrancy trend? Perhaps, more pertinently, what are the consequences for architects and urban designers of integrating large numbers of Western and ird world migrants into these rapidly expanding metropolises? It seems likely established notions of density, urban relationships (both spatial and social), and man's relationship with nature and himself will be radically challenged.
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e uncertainty over global economic forces means speci c predictions about how our cities will be shaped by these societal changes is a speculative subject and so huge, that its meaningful discussion sadly falls beyond the scope of this article. However, there are two pressing questions which we, as architects, can undertake to remain active participants in this process of change. Firstly, as a profession at the forefront of innovation, how can we utilise new technologies to forge stronger, symbiotic relationships with ordinary people: the users of our buildings and cities? Secondly, how can we empower people to achieve a better quality of life in their existing environment? Life A er Death for the Architectural Profession e problems facing the architectural profession are a microcosm of the wider world. e e ects of the GFC have led to high levels of unemployment, much of it stunting careers of younger professionals or students trying to gain experience. e length of education leaves many with huge crippling debts, creating an elitist culture where only those from wealthy backgrounds can undertake full-length studies. e inability of architecture to adequately create a sustainable future for itself, makes a mockery of its visions of a sustainable future for the built environment. How can it look a er society when it can't even look a er itself ? e human toll of creating the great architectural wonders of the ancient or medieval worlds is well known, the numbers of people forced to work and die creating the visions of monarchs and aristocrats. In e Death & Life of Great American Cities, Jane Jacobs spoke about this aspect of architecture, and the built environment generally, writing that "cities have the capability of providing something for everybody, only because, and only when, they are created by everybody." Perhaps future historians will look back at our time and scorn our abuses of the ird world and the poorest in society to build gleaming skyscrapers on Wall Street. Architects have o en been seen as the rich man's plaything, ful lling their own ambitions through the whims of the wealthy and powerful. Over the last 20-30 years the profession has lost in uence. Architects' roles and fees have been eroded by professionals specialising in aspects of the construction process that only architects had previously assumed. With the nancial crisis causing the wealthy to err on the side of caution, and restrict the number and ambition of projects, the profession is under attack from both sides. Perversely these immense challenges facing the architectural world also o er its greatest source of redemption, some would say salvation. Where societal change occurs, creativity, vision and positive direction are ultimately required to smoothen the transition. Architects have a huge role to play in this revolution, but in order to fully participate and thrive; they must rethink their processes to remain relevant. ey have the key advantage, perhaps more so than any of the creative disciplines, of combined creativity and exacting pragmatism. Architects must realise that above all, they are great collaborators by nature, and that these weapons must be directed at empowering ordinary people, in order to achieve the dual aims of the profession's survival to create a better, more equal world
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THE PLACE OF ARCHITECTS AND THE ARCHITECTURE OF A PLACE.
Mohamed Elshahed
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Mohamed Elshahed is a doctoral candidate in the Middle East Studies Department at New York University. He lives in Cairo, where he is conducting dissertation research on architecture and urban planning in Egypt from 1939 to 1965, with an emphasis on the Nasser years. Mohamed has a Bachelor of Architecture degree from the New Jersey Institute of Technology and a Master in Architecture Studies from MIT.
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Sayed Karim standing by one of his architectural models 1958.
Image Courtesy of Mohamed El Shahed.
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e profession of architecture celebrates exceptions rather than embrace the everyday. Students of architecture are taught to admire the heroes of modernism such as Frank Lloyd Write and Le Corbusier and to be inspired by the contemporary exceptionalism of Zaha Hadid and Foster. Most students of architecture quickly realize that they will not participate in the making of such architectures as they enter professional life. is gap between design aspiration and professional realities is further complicated in the context of developing and stagnant economies, such as Egypt's. In Egypt the majority of inhabitants lives and occupies buildings, which did not require the services of an architect. is is not a new or recent phenomenon, rather it has always been this way. Even in the most advanced economies, architects only participate in the design of a fraction of the built environment. So is it time for change in the way architects practice and participate in building processes? A nationalist process that aimed to replace the dominance of European architects paralleled the rise of the profession of architecture in Egypt starting in the 1920s. Egyptian architects embraced modernism as an architectural language distinguished from their European predecessors who largely practiced ornamental Beaux-arts. However, this shi in aesthetics did not challenge the quintessential relationship between architect and society: Egyptian architects still worked for wealthy clients and real estate speculators. Political shi s, namely the events that unfolded following the1952 coup d'�tat, challenged the role of architects as private clients decreased signi cantly and the state became the primary patron of architecture. is essay will attempt to present a nuanced analysis of the role of architects in Egypt in light of the recent past and the evolution of the profession in Egypt over the past century. e main argument is that it maybe time for Egyptian architects, and those working in similar socio-economic settings, to reconsider their potential within their societies by shi ing focus and making themselves relevant to the majority of populations rather than cater to an increasingly arrogant and self-isolating economic minority. From the middle of the nineteenth century until the beginning of the twentieth century, non-Egyptians dominated the profession of architecture in Egypt. Building traditions and building practices that had evolved over centuries continued side by side along with the emergence of European architects on the scene. While the architects served royalty, the wealthy and later real estate developers, the majority of the population continued to depend on master builders and skilled cra smen. e architectural eclecticism and stylistic diversity found in 19th and early 20th century architecture in Egypt re ects the diverse nationalities of architects and patrons who constructed such buildings. Egyptian nobility and state institutions commissioned non-Egyptian architects to design state buildings, villas, palaces and o ces. Not only were the architects foreign but building materials were also imported. Architecture with a capital "A" was thus an elite business. e few studies that had been conducted on the history of architecture in Egypt from this period have squarely focused on these elite
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buildings, spaces, architects and patrons. Architecture with a capital "A" is architecture that results from an academic engagement with the built environment. It is the practice of architecture following careful study of past constructions combined with a thorough understanding of present sites and conditions. Architecture with a capital "A" has also been about making conscious statements for public consumption: architecture as a tool to convey messages about class status and cultural associations. e rst half of the twentieth century witnessed the rise of a new class of architects who were the children of immigrants or foreigners settled in Egypt. ese "halfEgyptian" architects included Antoine Selim Nahas, Raymond Antonios, Albert Zananiri, Charles Ayrout, and Max Edrei. ey shi ed away from the work of the previous generation, adopting a more modernist design language rather than beaux-arts or the architecture of classically inspired facades. During the 1920s-1940s a growing middle class sought to build villas and apartment buildings and this generation of architects provided the designs, mostly free of ornament and aristocratic references. Despite this aesthetic shi and the expansion of the pool of clients architects continued to cater to the upper classes and the majority of the population continued to inhabit non-architected spaces. e 1940s and 50s witnessed the rise of worker housing and social housing, when the state commissioned architects to design for a segment of the population that had been excluded in their practice. ere were also experiments with model villages, an idea that began to develop in the 1940s during the last years of the monarchy and was further developed during the Nasser regime. However, these constructions were still about the relationship between architect and the state, rather than with the lower class inhabitants. Perhaps it is in this context that Hassan Fathy's "architecture for the poor" can be read as an experiment to counter the dichotomy that has long existed: that architecture is long been for the rich, while the poor built following di erent modes of spatial production. Fathy's architecture for the poor ultimately failed in practice in New Gourna, however his writing on the topic remains an interesting object for
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Hassan Fathy and the workers/future inhabitants of his village. Image Courtesy of Mohamed El Shahed.
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further study. e poor in Egypt already created architecture: "architecture without architects" as Bernard Rodufsky would say. One way to understand the failure of Fathy's New Gourna village is that he, as an upper class urban architect, attempted to insert himself into a process that has long existed without his services. In addition, the applicability of Fathy's rural models in an urban country such as Egypt is limited. And thus even Fathy's "architecture for the poor" has become a stylistic choice for the urban rich to build their country retreats. e relatively short history of the profession of architecture in Egypt shows that architects have historically only catered to the urban elite.
Architecture of place
It has been said repeatedly that architecture and the city are mirrors re ecting society. Late nineteenth century Cairo, for example, re ected the class diversity of Egyptian society and the modernizing aspirations of a social elite. Similarly mid-twentieth century Cairo re ects the growing middle class's aspiration to expand the city by investing in real estate paralleled by the working classes' attempt to build in the image of upper classes. In recent decades, however, despite the growth of the middle class, the urban poor have grown exponentially. e rapid change in Cairo's economic and social conditions is re ected in the reality of the city. A visible aspect of these transformations is the decrease and nearly disappearance of architects practicing architecture with a capital "A." As the wealthy continue to isolate themselves in gated communities hidden behind fences and security walls, the practice of architecture catering to the wealthy became invisible. roughout the twentieth century, architecture commissioned by the wealthy was visible to a wider public and therefore a source of inspiration. A wider public experienced grand apartment buildings, villas, and other buildings as pedestrians sharing the public space that brings society together: the street. Builders and cra smen catering to middle and lower classes were able to replicate the designs of architects and to further elaborate upon them in their constructions for a wider public. While Heliopolis and Downtown were elite districts, Shubra, Ghamra and Abdeen were working and middle class districts. e architecture of the later districts exhibits an inspiration and an elaboration on the architecture of the former. Today, with an increasingly divided society and city, the work of architects is made invisible by the mere geography of class division that dominates the city. Adding to the present situation are the deterioration in architectural education and the domination of contractors with little or no architectural background. Visible new constructions by the middle and upper classes, in contrast with those of previous generations, display a detachment with the architectural heritage of place. Additionally the skilled builders and workers that built in previous generations to the middle and lower urban classes have too lost much of their practices and skills, which have been replaced with pre-cast ornaments set by unskilled labour. As the place of architects diminishes in Egyptian society the architecture of urban Egypt is increasingly degenerated.
A Call for Change
Despite the enormous challenges facing Egyptian cities today and the massive transformation Egyptian society and economy underwent in the past sixty years, the profession of architecture in Egypt has not evolved. While more universities now o er degrees in architecture and the number of graduates has increased exponentially, they all compete to serve an increasingly small segment of society. Architecture
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has continued to function as an elite practice making it increasingly invisible in a society with relatively few elites. Change is needed in architectural education in Egypt but also in the very nature of the profession. e role of architects in the decisionmaking process regarding the management and governance of Egyptian cities has nearly disappeared. Fields surrounding the practice of architecture that are equally important such as architectural critics and historians do not exist. Practices that focus on Egypt's enormous wealth of historic urban heritage, its preservation, modernization and adaptive reuse are also non-existent. Also missing is architect's ability to innovate by engaging with local contexts and by learning from successful practices of the urban poor. Finally, there is a possibility for architects to reinvent their role in Egyptian society by adopting the role of the master builder of yesteryears: operating a workshop model, developing skills for workers and working collaboratively with a team of other specialized architects, builders and community leaders. e rise of the profession of architecture in Egypt followed a bourgeois European model that was applicable to some extent in Egypt during a period of relative economic prosperity. As the country's political landscape shi ed and later as societal structures and economic realities also changed, the profession failed to readjust. In light of recent transformations architects in Egypt and similar contexts are presented with a challenge: to continue with the present unsustainable models of professional practice or challenge the status quo by making architects integral to processes of social, economic and political change
A laborer carrying bricks during the reconstruction of Port Said in 1957 . Image Courtesy of Mohamed El Shahed.
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The Place of Architects and the Architecture of a Place . Mohamed Elshahed
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CHANGE: PHOTOESSAY.
Filippo Romano, Giovanna Silva, Francesco Giusti.
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of Urbino Italy graduating in 1994. In 1998, a er a period spent in Paris, he moved to New York and studied photojournalism and photo documentary with Mary Ellen Mark and Antoine D'Agata at the International Center of photography (ICP). His work about spaces and architecture has been published by Skira publishing company, and by the magazines Abitare , Dwell, Io Donna and Courrier International. In 2001 he contributed with Genova Domino to the photographic project about Genova outskirts, I dintorni dello sguardo coordinated by Stefano Boeri and Francesco Jodice. e Japanese museum of Kyiosato acquired one of his series in the permanent collection. He has participated at the Gaungzhou Photo Biennale in 2005 and his work has been part of the RIP in Arles 2006, 2007. In 2007 he was the author of "Soleri Town"; a book about the utopian architecture of Paolo Soleri. In 2009 he was selected in the exhibition " e Joy" at the Rome photo festival with "Waterfront". He is a member of the Agency Luzphoto. Giovanna Silva, lives and works in Milan. As a photographer, she exhibited her work about the city of Bogot�, Colombia at the Venice Biennale 2006. Her most recent publication is "Desertions", a chronicle of an American trip with designer Enzo Mari. From 2005-2007 she contributed to Domus and she was the Photo Editor of Abitare from September 2007 until September 2011. She photographed Renzo Piano and Zaha Hadid for the Abitare's special issues `Being Renzo Piano' and `Being Zaha Hadid', 6 month experience of architecture in the making. In October 2011 she published a new book, Orantes, ed. uodlibet. She is on the editorial board of San Rocco Magazine. Francesco Giusti is a freelance documentary photographer oriented towards the investigation of social realities, communities and identity related issues. His research about psychiatry among the long-standing inmates of "L.Bianchi Psychiatric Hospital" in Napoli received the honorable mention of "Leica Oskar Barnack Award" in 1999 and was a nalist of "Prix Care du Reportage Humanitaire" in 2000. In 2002 he was awarded of "Premio Canon Giovani Fotogra " as "Best Photographic Project" with an intimate portrait story about a community of transvestites in Genoa. During the last years he has documented immigration and asylum seekers' issues especially in Italy and the Mediterranean Sea. In 2006 he published the book "Hotel Industria" and the volume "Ex Fabrica � Identities and mutations on the border of the metropolis"; both publications are about the ex-industrial areas on the outskirts of Milan, inhabited and transformed into shelters by illegal immigrants (honorable mention Ponchielli Award 2003). He has documented slums in Nairobi, Cairo and Port Au Prince; part of a long on-going project about metropolis and informal settlement communities. He has recently worked in Haiti, in the Sub-Sahara area of Western Africa and in Congo Brazzaville. His works have been published in Italy and abroad and exhibited in galleries and international photographic events . (ISIA) . (Skira) . (ICP) . (Courrier International) (Io Donna) (Dwell) (Abitare) . . (JOY) . ( ) . (RIP) .(Luzphoto) .( ) (Disertions) . . .(Abitare) (Domus) - . . (San Rocco) . (Quodlibet) (Orantes) . (Abitare) . (Prix Care du Reportage Humanitaire) . ( ) . (Premio Canon Giovani Fotogra ) . - ) (Hotel Industria) ( ) . (Ex Fabrica � Identities and mutations on the border of the metropolis) ( .( ) .� � .
Filippo Romano, born in 1968, is a documentary and architecture photographer. He studied graphic design at the ISIA
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STATES
San Francisco Ocean View series � Filippo Romano
WALLS
San Francisco Ocean View series � Filippo Romano
POWER
San Francisco Ocean View series � Filippo Romano
DECAY
Saddam's house, Babylon, 2011 , , � Giovanna Silva
WALLS
New Sohag, 2012 , � Giovanna Silva
INFORMAL
Bogot�, 2006 , � Giovanna Silva
POWER
Cairo, Celebrations during the night of Mubarak's resignation. , � Francesco Giusti
INFORMAL
Cairo, Informal markets at Manshiet Nasser district . , � Francesco Giusti
WALLS
Nairobi, Buildings in Mathare slum. , � Francesco Giusti
FROM CHANGE CONTROL TO ADAPTATION.
Ahmad Borham
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Ahmad Borham is a design architect and teaching assistant
at the American university and the Arab Academy of Science and Technology and other educational institutions in Cairo. Ahmad is an independent researcher interested in the issue of resilience against change and transformation in the built environments. In addition, Ahmad draws parallels between Cairo and other cities' urban conditions in http://drawingparallels.blogspot.com/
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Tahrir Square, 1 August 2011, Cairo . Image Courtesy of Livia Minoja.
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Complex Adaptive Systems (CAS) are non-linear, self-organizing systems that have the ability to adapt to changing conditions through changing the rules that organize the random autonomous interactions between agents in the environment. is adaptation takes place through gradual gained experience that is re ected in the agent's behavior. Interacting agents that are described in terms of certain rules generate complex temporal patterns. Emergent higher level patterns can arise out of parallel complex interaction between local agents. Emergent systems are rule governed systems; their capacity for learning and growth and experimentation is derived from governing decentralized level local rules. Acknowledging that giving up top-down control, giving systems a margin of freedom to govern themselves bottom-up as much as possible and letting it learn from and build on their experience is essential to understand emergence in CAS. Applying this framework to case studies from informal settlements around Cairo, we identify several innovations in governance that emerged in this program and demonstrate how complex adaptive system thinking can be useful in understanding how governance can enhance resilience. e complex adaptive systems approach shi s the perspective on governance from the aim to control change in resources through a rigid prescriptive socio-political systems that is assumed to be stable, to enhancing the capacity of social-ecological systems to learn to live with and shape change and even nd ways to transform into more desirable directions. Adaptive management of environmental resources presents a challenge to traditional government, with its reliance on bureaucratic procedures, the lengthy processes of legislative deliberation, and the o en arbitrary nature of judicial decision making.
Self-government and self-organization in social organizations
"Self-organization" and "Self-governance" are two di erent strategies for behavior management. Selforganization is a system of autonomous subsystems acting jointly under the in uence of a unifying agent but without supervision can achieve apparently purposeful and coordinated activity. During the original occupation of Tahrir, neighborhood self-governance again became a necessity. e already minimal functioning of government infrastructure ceased, and plainclothes police even took part in organized looting in attempts to terrify people. Popular neighborhood committees appeared throughout the entire country within the matter of a night. People came down from their apartments to the streets in the midst of a mobile phone and internet blackout and set up checkpoints and communications systems to defend their neighborhoods from police and other anti-social elements. Within Tahrir premises, an autonomous community emerged as have been illustrated by the image published by the BBC. During the 18 days of the sit-in that ended by throwing Mubarak o the throne of Egypt, several manifestation of self-organization existed. A fresh state united towards one single goal, was being formulated within a dying political system. is state had its borders, medical and waste management and even a street network urban patterns emerging between protesters tents and informal markets that supply the daily basic needs. e lesson learnt from Tahrir Square protesters was one of harmonious self-governance in a at mesh-like structure rather than the control-oriented hierarchical model. Lateral coordination came easily when participants were diverse enough across quali cations
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From Change Control to Adaptation. Ahmad Borham
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Waste Management . Image Courtesy of: Andrew Burton
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to complement each other, held equal respect for each member, and focused on a shared goal. As for self-governance, it brings the sort of exibility that allows not just quick response, but immediate adaptation and its capacity to carry out complex, temporally extended plans. e di erence between self-organization and self-governance is a di erence in how the system as a whole manages its activity. Insu cient water and electricity grids or the lack of a gas network to cover the needs of the inhabitants of these areas are among several typical problems that informal areas such as Ard Liwa' and other settlements developed without a coordinated urban plan su er from. is is partly because these areas are either registered as farm, desert land or not recognized as residential. Added to this, there are no public hospitals or schools. Only private schools and community clinics exist to serve middle class. As for the poor majority they have to send their children far away to public schools in Muhandeseen or Imbaba. ere are not even police stations or re stations for emergencies. e existence of these critical issues over a long period of time and up until now is evident for the inadequacy of existing governance system to take care of these problems. In reaction to Communities with this inadequacy, have turned to solutions such as establishing new autonomous administrative entities. Ard Liwa' is an example of autonomous administrative units that exists within the city of Cairo. An elected o cial of this popular (sha'bi) settlement elaborates on the autonomous nature of this area: Ard Liwa' is an independent local unit. is settlement was originally a farm land within the village of Mu'tamidiya. People started to settle in this area during the 1970s. Ard Liwa' is considered as a slum ('Ashwa'iyat) or self-made and unregistered residential neighborhood that encircles the business district of Al-Muhandeseen and merges with working class neighborhoods of
`In traditional governance, planning is linear and the criterion for success is the attainment of policy goals. In a collaborative CAS, planning is nonlinear and the criterion for success is the realization of collective free action by the agents.'
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From Change Control to Adaptation. Ahmad Borham
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e construction progress that was all self-organized by the residents of Mu'tamidiya.
Source: page on facebook
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Imbaba and Mit 'Uqba. It is to be considered a signi cant initiative in this area where the inhabitants self-organized and constructed a connection to the ring road that passes by the area. What's interesting is that the government completed the works and nished it in an example of recognition of selforganized informal action. Concerning the issue of waste management and utilities, as there is no proper waste management or trash collection system (like most of Cairo), Mu'tamidiya is one of six recycling neighborhoods that form a ring around the city of Cairo. is mentality of self-organization forms the basis for every development in the informal settlements.
Emerging new process for governance
Traditional ideas about governance involve a top-down hierarchy under a single central controlling authority. In contrast, a CAS is characterized by interdependent network clusters under distributed control, with an open boundary and shared authority. e goals of agencies in traditional governance are ideally clear with de ned problems. e goals in a collaborative CAS are various and changing. In traditional governance, planning is linear and the criterion for success is the attainment of policy goals. In a collaborative CAS, planning is nonlinear and the criterion for success is the realization of collective free action by the agents. In the long term, governance strategies for resilience may require a combination of strategies depending on the context such as the Mu'tamidiya case. Another example of this balance is evident in the underground market in the pedestrian underpass near the bosphorous in the area of Karak�y, Istanbul in Turkey where the municipality acknowledged the informal markets emerging in the underpass and organized it in a win-win situation where the state raised a valuable amount of money from renting this spot and mutually the vendors make use of the ow of tourists on their way to the bosphourus trip. In contrast, the vendors in Cairo, Egypt are chased by the police and treated violently as criminals and thugs, and in the end their products get kicked and thrown in the garbage. is emergent model of self-governance and self-organization experienced in liberation squares all-over Egypt during the rst days of the revolution and before that for more than six decades within the informal settlements all around Cairo in response to incompetence and corruption of the political and governance system can be more resonant with e ective approaches to adaptive management that enhance resilience for resource management than traditional government practices
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From Change Control to Adaptation. Ahmad Borham
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Annotated photo from BBC (over Reuters photo) of Tahrir Square, Cairo at the height of the 2011 protests. Source: BBC.
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HOUSING AGAINST CITIZENSHIP. Post-Socialist
Residential Development on the Case of Zlokukjani Settlement in Skopje.
Jovan Ivanovski and Ana Ivanovska
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Jovan Ivanovski is an architect and a teaching assistant at the Faculty of Architecture in Skopje. He holds a Diploma in architecture from the Faculty of architecture in Skopje and a Master of Architecture from Dessau Institute of Architecture in Germany where he was a scholar of DAAD. He practiced architecture at o ces in Germany and Switzerland. He is currently working on his PhD thesis on post-socialist transition and its in uence on recent housing developments in Skopje. In 2006 and 2008 he was representing Republic of Macedonia on the Venice Biennale of Architecture. e project of 2006 - "Skopje City of Possible Worlds" - was mentioned by the o cial jury and later awarded the Big Annual Award of the Association of Architects of Macedonia. In June 2011, Jovan Ivanovski was curator of the Macedonian contribution at the 12th Prague uadrennial of theatre and scene design and an author of the presentation at architectural section. Outside the academic eld he is a cofounder and member of SCArS (Studio for Contemporary Architecture Skopje). Ana Ivanovska (1978) is an architect and a teaching assistant at the Faculty of Architecture in Skopje. She graduated at this Faculty in 2002 and nished her Master of Science studies in 2008. Currently she is working on her PhD thesis concerning the reevaluation of the architecture in Skopje built a er the disastrous earthquake in 1963. Outside the academic eld she is a co-founder and member of SCArS (Studio for Contemporary Architecture Skopje founded 2008). Within this studio, she took part in several architectural competitions, some of them awarded. In 2008 she was a part of the team that represented Macedonia at the XI Venice Bienale of Architecture with the project Metamak � Cutouts.
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opposite page: Villa Veneta, Skopje - Zlokukjani . - , : Source: panoramio.com/photo/26080066
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When Mohamed, the young Tunisian vendor set himself on re at a public square in his home city in order to defend his dignity a er a policeman con scated his scales and slapped him in face, no one believed that his solitary act would initiate social protests on a global level. Nevertheless, millions of people supported his symbolic statement as a form of demonstration against his countries corrupt and dysfunctional political and economic system. A condition familiar in many Arab countries but also in many others elsewhere in the world. As result of this global social uprising, 2011 was a year where not only many dictators fell but the world entered into a search of a new "social contract" that will no longer bias the rich and powerful. Almost a quarter of a century ago, yet another symbolic act, the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989 marked the beginning process of transition in the former communist countries. Shortly a er, dramatic transformations of political, economic and social systems changed not only the geopolitical map of Europe but a ected the urban realm and the life of millions of people. However, more than two decades a er the abandonment of communism, the cities in the former Eastern Block countries are still in the process of transition. What was expected to be only a passage from one state to another, became in itself a state, a lasting condition. If cities themselves are spatial projection of society as Henri Lefebvre claimed, what kind of city is being produced in the state of CHANGE from socialist to post-socialist society; in the state of transformation from a planned to a market oriented economy? Is it possible to track how the social transformation is interlinked with the urban mutation and are there any distinctive architectural outcomes?
Post-socialist context
e process of (post-socialist) transition can be explained as simultaneous transformation of political, economic and social system of the country. It is a gradual process as it requires establishing new institutions, new organizations, new laws and new behavior of the various participants in the system. Political systems undergo transformation which is constitutional and institutional corresponding to the economic transformation that leads to the introduction of new property regime and new criteria of distribution and value. Establishment of market oriented economy is considered to be the leading societal transformation. Being interpreted as a more e cient way of organizing the production and exchange of goods, it is to substitute the previous system of central planning where the new legal framework must re-establish the principle of private property. Processes of privatization and restitution are supposed to lead to a massive transfer of assets and re-evaluation of property by the rules of emerging market. From a sociological point of view, "transition" can be de ned as a particularly signi cant stage of societal development in which more and more external and/or internal di culties hinder the reproduction of the social and economic environment that forms the basis of society. New economic and social conditions emerge to become generally dominant in due course. Whether rapidly or slowly, violently or peacefully, these new conditions determine how the new system of society will look".1
1 Enyedi, G. 1998, Transformation in Central European Postsocialist Cities. In G. Enyedi (ed.) Social Change and Urban Restructuring in Central Europe., Budapest: Akad�miai Kiad�, p.9
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e formation of two extreme social categories, the new poverty stratum and the new elite, are the two main groups that emerged from economic polarization as the transition from socialist to post-socialist economy has increased the social and spatial polarization. is divided conditions of the political and economic organization of society and social relations are further generating conditions where actions of individuals are in uenced and that is what shapes the emerging urban sociospatial outcomes. (Harloe, 1996; Szel�nyi, 1978, 1996). In this context, the aim of this paper is to contribute to discussions on post-socialist transformation of cities and how political, economic and social Change are a ecting the production of housing. e main focus of this paper is in revealing the mechanisms of how "architecture" is being produced in the relationship between socio-economic polarization and the given urban conditions. Furthermore, the paper will describe the architectural outcomes that are result of completely opposing processes of nancing, planning, designing and production of architectural space.
Case Study Location Zlokukjani. . Source: Ivanovski, J. 2008, Decoding post-socialist transition on the case of Skopje � housing in the arena of private interest � emergence of new urban prototypes. � Jovan Ivanovski
Within the patterns of post-socialist transformation of Macedonian cities, the capital city of Skopje should be observed as a single case. First, following the violent disintegration of Socialist Federative Republic of Yugoslavia, Republic of Macedonia emerged as an independent state in 1991. Likewise all other largest cities of the former Yugoslav republics, Skopje was upgraded from center of semiautonomous republic into a state capital city. In the dramatic theater of the re-born Balkan nation states, it immediately became symbol of the country's political and economic power. Second, due to its rapid growth of population, the city is still in the center of a very intensive process of urbanization of its territory; Skopje today is a city that grows in its center, in its periphery, in its voids, even on top of itself. For several decades, the periphery of Skopje has been considered a territory where ethnically compact and socially underprivileged groups of population are "solving" their housing problems. Historically, these illegally constructed neighborhoods were erected by usurpation of state-owned land over which usually substandard buildings were constructed. " e period from the mid sixties to the end of the seventies was an "ideal" period for slum-isation of the city. is is the one of the most meaningful speci cs which can rarely been seen in other cities with mixed population, regarding the nationality and religion, which will to a large extent determine the destiny of its reconstruction". 2 In total, the fringes of the city are now considered to be welcoming 26 illegal settlements, many of them considered slums.
2 Aceski, I. 1996, Skopje Between Vision and Reality (Skopje Vizija i Realnost), Filozofski Fakultet, 280-300
City of Skopje as a case study
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`For several decades, the periphery of Skopje has been considered a territory where ethnically compact and socially underprivileged groups of population are "solving" their housing problems.' '
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e most fascinating of those illegal settlements is called Zlokukjani. is case study provides traces of socio-spatial juxtaposition where the urban edge of the city is now witnessing a contradictory situation. Next to the slum that was created by several historical sequences of development, the recent fabric of completely opposite origin was superimposed. Unusually, in closest proximity of the slum, a section of the farmland was replaced with a "walled" residential development. A gated community forming a unique case of ultimate spatial fragmentation and an extreme example of social division.
Two models of residential development: 1. Ghetto community
e slum of Zlokukjani is home to a total population of 670 residents distributed within 123 households. Most of the families generate their income by collecting and then reselling metal or cardboard materials and as much as 50 percent of the population earns its means by this way. More than 24 percent of the total population receives social help, only 19 percent are regularly employed, 15 percent are generating their incomes through bagging and as much as 3 percent of the population are nancially supported by a family member that lives outside the country. e built form and fabric of the slum is simply a representation of the complex social circumstances described above. ose circumstances are re ected in the spatial structure of the slum which is very active in its day to day transformation. Negotiating of "property lines" between family members or close neighbors causes situation where we can't identify a xed housing typology. As the boundaries of usage become exible and mutable, di erent types are constantly introduced and are continually undergoing recon guration. e dwellings are arranged in such physical proximity that every spatial decision is negotiated and must end with an agreement. e ultimate result is exibility of the built form that represents change of spatial interest for the inhabitants. Shanties are an abstract form of architecture and as they are dressed only with recycled materials, there is no false appearance. ere are neither ambitious nor revolutionary attempts to create something unique. Under the envelope of reused cardboards a variety of social situations are ongoing and that is directly re ected in the space. e informality prevails and every possible alternative to reuse something is seized. Initiated by discovery of new material artifacts that are to be found on the streets, dynamic typological con gurations of the residences are constantly reproduced. e top
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part of an old car becomes a roof for the yard toilet and an old door casing is rotated and reused as a window frame. Household shi s and so does the dwelling, in the processes of simultaneous growth and shrinking. e nal appearance of house is generated spontaneously by the very basic needs of people. At this level and on this small scale, we dare to call it, architecture.
2. Gated community
Next to the residential landscape of the most socially excluded population, an entirely new "neighborhood" was erected. e section of the farmland nearby the slum became attractive to a private developer who recognized the blurred ownership and legislative circumstances in which this territory was found and decided to capitalize on them. By converting the agricultural into construction land, the private developer managed to build an "elite" residential complex comprising 16 housing units. A walled area constituted by independent villas where zoning and architectural design were accomplished by an integrally-organized project. e elite neighborhood of Zlokukani is promoted to be a haven of safety, privacy and lifestyle, qualities of life that are supposedly missing outside. In the transitional nomenclature of "winners" and "losers" in the society, the post-socialist elite or the "nouveau rich" are considered to be "the one who succeed" as they managed to capitalize from the transformation of the political and economic system. eir main cultural performance is rooted in their desire to live "di erently than the others". As a direct opposite to the communist model of social equality, the paradigm of the "nouveau rich" can be related to the desire for individual importance, social status and dominantly to the presentation of their materialistic achievements. e public presentation of their wealth status to the rest of society is one of their most favorable tasks which they usually achieve by possession of universal symbols of status represented as luxurious cars and particularly, expensive single family houses. By all means, the growth of a detached single family housing is one of the most distinctive forms of building activities produced by this post-socialist elite; the house as a materialization of their ambitions to express their social position by means of material and aesthetic terms. Architecture in this context could be understood as memorial to the economic power gained by the unclear rules of transition. e appearances of the buildings express this contradiction very well. Compared to the houses of the former socialist elites which were small in size and disciplined in their appearance, today's "nouveau riche" want to live in super-sized volumes of "recognizable" amboyant architecture. e stylistic preferences usually follow two categories: either an admiration of the past architectural styles or a more "international" direction materialized in "the more the merrier" post-modern baroque. Unlike the minimal or even non existent security that was case with the housing of socialist elite, the "nouveau riche" prefer living surrounded by fences as well as covered by close circuit television security systems. e most distinctive spatial element of the exclusive settlement is the protective wall. e barrier is an instrument of guarding the occupied land against the neighboring poor. As this exclusive settlement is sta ed by private security guards, the wall is more a guarantee against interruptions in the "private" territory rather than being a mechanism of security. ere is a controlled entrance in the settlement which leads to small network of streets that are surrounding a small park and two mini lakes. e outer congestion of real socio-spatial "wilderness" is substituted with construction of an interior "world" based
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Urban Disparities. Ivanovski, J. 2008, Decoding post-socialist transition on the case of Skopje � housing in the arena of private interest � emergence of new urban prototypes. � Jovan Ivanovski
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on exclusion. Rather than experiencing the real one that is just outside, members of the emerging elite are enjoying a fake, constructed landscape of "wilderness" of arti cial lakes, limestone covered pathways and small wooden bridges. Architecture pops up somewhere in between being the last high resolution detail of this "strumph" urbanism. e overall image is sold on cover pages of real estates magazines that are to be found elsewhere in the world. With multiple associations and "meanings" that are borrowed from the past styles, this architecture is the most recent revival of the con ict against the "anonymity of boxes". In the e ort to contextualize that resistance the architecture tries to employ as many motifs from local building traditions, a step that is supposed to be a certain grant for identity. Using historic forms that are materialized through di erent materials, the building becomes a billboard of re-usage of styles. A row of columns that is next to a set of traditional windows that are under the scaled version of a renaissance dome on top of which a satellite dish receiver is installed; a hyper decorated hut is the materialized outcome of hybridization of ambitions. Rather than being materialization of objects of use as it is in the neighboring ghetto, architecture in the walled paradise is substance of consumption! e main purpose of this architecture rendered in stone and bricks is to last, similarly like its owners wish to last too. e city of Skopje as an investigation eld proves that private interest is increasingly changing the built environment of the city. Over the current physical condition that is an outcome of urban discontinuities, Skopje's urban growth is unparalleled compared to any other city in the country. Historic urban legacy in combination with the emergent forces of the post-socialist
`Gated community as a model of residential development is such a trend of usurpation of territory towards privatization of urban services, increasing fragmentation, social polarization, and reduced solidarity with the rest of urban society'
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CHANGE led to a process of rapid rewriting of the urban form. e development of new urban substance goes beyond the traditional forms and concepts of the city. e transformation takes place on every level and on every scale, from territorial to architectural. City substance is most likely produced by individual initiatives rather than by any coherent system of planning. Urban territories became pixelized elds a ected by private ownership. In the context of the contemporary circumstances of inequality of the socio-spatial structure, the housing sector has been subject to a signi cant deregulation where a dwelling has become a costly economic commodity. Residential real estate market has become considerably active following the increased construction of new housing. Domination of the private, developer-built housing supply followed by the privatization of the construction sector has contributed to the dramatic reorganization of the housing industry. Parallel to that, alternative strategies of housing supply emerge being particularly interesting because they produce diversity of experiences with unique urban outcomes that could be potentially disastrous consequence for the future of the city. Gated community as a model of residential development is such a case, re ecting the global trend of usurpation of territory towards privatization of urban services, increasing fragmentation, social polarization, and reduced solidarity with the rest of urban society. Masked behind the need for security, the walled settlement is actually a type of physical and social enclave that has negative e ect on the development of urban communities and the overall social capital. Obviously, it is only a question of prestige, status and lifestyle that plays a major role in ones decision to live in this kind of settlement rather than the thought that socio-economic supremacy in the time of absolute social uncertainty needs walls as protection. To conclude, the physical isolation from the city contradicts the urban freedom and consequently the citizenship understood as a socially essential form of urbanity. And although it probably succeeds in making individuals and families feel safer and privileged, gated community is an obvious example of the devastating social forces of fragmentation that emerged in the post-socialist transition, established along the lines of income, ethnicity, and politics. As Jane Jacobs concluded, "It's a gang way of looking at life, the institutionalization of turf. And if it goes on inde nitely, and gets intensi ed, it practically means the end of civilization." 3
3 Dillon, D. 1994, Fortress America, Planning Magazine, American Planning Association
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Chronology of Spatial Transformation . Ivanovski J. 2008, Decoding post-socialist transition on the case of Skopje � housing in the arena of private interest � emergence of new urban prototypes, Master esis submitted at Anhalt University of Applied Sciences - Dessau Institute of Architecture. � Jovan Ivanovski
2010
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HOMELESS.
Dina Magdy
Dina Magdy is an architect and designer from Cairo. She graduated from the faculty of Engineering, Ain-Shams University in 2005 and later she completed a professional program for project management at the American University in Cairo. From 2006 till 2010, she has collaborated with the Architecture & Urban Planning Bureau, Archplan, Prof. Dr. Ayman Ashour, in Cairo. And currently she is collaborating with the real-estate properties sector, architectural and construction supervision department, at the Housing and Development Bank in Cairo.
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Homeless man Hand-written quotations. Original photos by: Dina Magdy
"Egyptian only by name. I do not know Egyptians or Egypt and I wouldn't care to do; since some people's acts may drive one to hate his own home and fellows."
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" ere's always a place; Where one can start over"; he said. A place where one can serve... can live... He wondered; "To whom you belong, And what reason got you here?" Doubting that some people still feel... still care... Well... everyday... I pass this way... Seemed you've been here forever... He smiles, generously invites, And tells stories about life... "Being here, granted a chance; found a purpose for existence..." Some days... he could relieve; and days... has willingly helped. other nights, he needed a hand, but no one... has ever lent... Lonely... as he may appear; It's him... who's always there. I thought: So let me help... Why... don't you accept? " ank you, I'm not in need, and that... won't change a thing" Insisted: en let me help. Help... my soul revive. Still refuse to believe? Refuse to believe in others again? Reject... to let anyone in? deep; where there's much pain... en... he's touched inside, Smiled. But still repeats: "Miss... it won't change a thing, So please... just forget"
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Homeless. Dina Magdy
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Started to see the story behind, hidden in his sore smile... e tale of an exile... at home... another story of oppression. "But here I am" he carried on, "doesn't matter what, why, or when" I tried to gure out the villain... Was it someone; who made it happen? Someone who let it happen? Or other one who couldn't prevent? Time has passed, still million thoughts inside... But he wrote: "goodbye". He wrote... as he le his words, somewhere, with whomever he le ... and now; It's the paper and the pen... And there... he lied again, covered his face from the sun, back to his peaceful sleep... In a scene; that kept me since... sleepless And back to the cruel world, where eyes are passing by, Shadows in the streets; staring... yet hardly see... Only few wondered; who might be? A question; but only in the head... Unsaid... Unheard... Insane? Abandoned man? Could be... But he certainly is... another... Homeless
Meanwhile, million have passed by; wondered what is "she" doing there; our attitude for years, in an era that taught us much about sel shness and nothing about social responsibility
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Homeless. Dina Magdy
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DESERT IN THE CITY. The 2011
Libyan Revolutions' Relevance for Spatial Theory & Practice.
Milan Zlatkov
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Milan Zlatkov was born in 1986 in Dimitrovgrad, Republic of Serbia. He received a Bachelor of
Science in Architecture at the Faculty of Architecture, University of Belgrade, Serbia; and Master of Science in Architecture at the Faculty of Architecture, Del University of Technology, e Netherlands. He focuses on architectural theory, research and design with respect to polycentric urban growth, spatial con icts, border conditions, politics of power and the right to the city. He is interested in the positioning and phenomenology of di erent analysis and interpretation techniques in spatial design. He is also currently working as a freelance architect, and engaging in theoretical and critical re ections on contemporary architectural and urban issues. His recent writings include "Public Spaces Between Institutions and Individuals" ("Fragiles Conference", Sint-Lucas Faculty of Architecture, Ghent, March 2012) and "Revisit the Non-place: e density of problems and the problem of density in architecture and planning" (Plat Magazine, Rice School of Architecture, Houston, TX, forthcoming: Autumn 2012). His other interests include mapping, geography, politics, international relations and networks.
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All images in this article are Courtesy of and Copyrighted to : � Loris Savino (Betweenlands)
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When asked what was, in his opinion, the greatest modern calamity, an old peasant form the �le-de-France answered without hesitation: "the news." When pressed to explain, he said: "You see, for me the war of 1914 broke out just like that; om one day to the next we didn't see it coming. e day before general mobilization, we were calm, no one around here even dreamed there'd be a war and yet we're less than a hundred kilometres om Paris... Whereas with radio and now with television, we feel like we're always on the brink of war or some catastrophe, and we can't take it anymore." 1 ese media and the e ects they produce are obviously detached from geographical territory as for instance what now happens "less than a hundred kilometres from Paris" can be caused by an event somewhere in Africa, and can further trigger new events in Asia. However recently, as the ow of information constantly intensi es that media cannot overcome some other social splits; unlike the geographical ones. ey have to be expressed back into physical territory through gatherings, protests, riots, battles and even full scale wars. e growing number of unrests, as it has become convenient to call them, is undoubtedly caused by the current crisis of the capitalist system - a system of which the media2 is an important part. Even though some of the new media, such as social networking platforms, have been used to express discontent and organize manifestations of revolt. It has never been until this revolt was expressed on the streets and squares of cities that it materialized in any kind of change. Since the social media, which are o en hailed for their democratic potential, are o en used as propaganda tools and are so over lled by irrelevant information, physical presence and spatial occupancy are regaining their importance. ese processes, due to their rea rming spatial dimension, are of great importance for spatial theory. e possibility of quick gathering in Tahrir Square and spontaneous organization of temporary functionalities to serve those gathered, has been noted and praised by many architects, planners and urban sociologists. Other events, such as the protesters' camps in Madrid or New York, also illustrated that using media to express opinion is not satisfactory, and that the importance of physical presence in space for this purpose is growing. Due to the temporary character of these events, the outcome for the spaces is as expected: they are back to what they were: squares, parks and roundabouts. But if nothing, it is clear that they are not devoid of any role and meaning in urban processes of change.
1 2 Paul Virilio, A Landscape of Events, trans. Julie Rose (Cambridge: e MIT Press, 2000), 64-65. Media in the widest sense, including radio, television and the internet.
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Desert in the City. Milan Zlatkov
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While more thorough evaluation of these phenomena is perhaps in the coming, it is worthwhile to open some other discussions, as well. e preoccupation of architects and planners with public space has le perhaps the most outstanding of the recent con icts unnoticed by them. e 2011 Libyan Revolution all the while brought to the fore a new horizon, which metaphorically, as well as literally, has the potential to supplement contemporary theories of space, architecture and urbanism. e rst small protests in Libya started in January of 2011 in a number of towns, reportedly as a response to delays in the construction of housing units. ese protests quickly grew in size to become open armed clashes between the protesters and the government forces. e con ict started to resemble those in the neighbouring Tunisia and Egypt, and was seen as a part of the Arab Spring. However, as the actors in the clashes in di erent towns started to coordinate e orts, the con ict quickly developed into a fully edged revolution, and the whole country became entangled in ghts to control towns as nodes in the political landscape. While an external power controlled the sky, towns started falling back and forth into hands of the rebels and Gadda 's forces. is frantic condition meant that a lot of activities were happening in the vast areas between the towns. If the preceding revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt happened mostly in their capital cities and a couple of major urban centres, the war in Libya played out on a di erent spatial scale. Here the countryside was turned into a free operating ground into which ghters were retreating to `recharge' and reorganize, civilians were eeing into safety, and journalists were reporting on what was happening around them, and speculating on what was going on in the cities. is situation represented a geographical twist
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in which cities, the common centres of the most free social activity3 , became nothing but nodes on a map showing who controlled what, while the countryside, the desert, became free land, not controlled by anyone, free for everyone to do whatever they couldn't do in the cities. Even if the Libyan Desert o ered limited possibilities, it o ered freedom. Like in every war, there was a lot of space for manipulation. e outside world learned about the war from reports that came from the highways between Misrata and Bani Waled or Sirte and Ras Lanuf, while having no idea what was actually happening inside those towns. But precisely this shi of attention from the urban centres to the non-urban countryside is perhaps the Libyan revolution's biggest legacy for urban and architectural theory. In a country where natural conditions are rather extreme, and there is not much intertwining between the urban and the non-urban conditions, this war and the strategies employed in it revealed relevant insight into the relation between cities and their hinterlands. On this topic, in 1970, Henri Lefebvre writes: e rural-peasant, although primordial and a dominant eld for centuries, only took shape a er being acted upon by its conquerors, by administrators in the political city. Such cities can have only a political existence, dominating a rural world whose rivers bathe, nourish, and occasionally submerge it. 4 Perhaps the architects and planners of these political cities, have always seen themselves in part as conquerors and administrators, and have been interested in the non-urban condition mainly inasmuch as it o ered space for urban extension. But if protests in cities managed to raise their awareness of the fundamental values of public spaces, this war should do the same with respect to non-urban areas. Whether they are patched into privately owned pieces of land, or administered by governments, non-urban spaces o er a lot of unexplored possibilities for action, that are in the nal outcome, relevant for life in urban centres. Regardless of ownership, the lack of presence and density of population and activities attributes a great extent of freedom to non-urban areas. is emptiness means that the structures of power, which we are so much used to in urban centres, are absent in non-urban areas by default. It is a condition for which in cities people have to ght: they have to organize, gather, protest, occupy and even die, in order to reassert public-ness of spaces and transparency of institutions that manage them. In rural areas this transparency is a given. at much of the strategies of the Libyan revolution included the use of hinterlands, illustrates
3 4 It is important to note that freedom of gathering o en had to be fought for, like in Cairo. Henri Lefebvre, e Urban Revolution, trans. Robert Bononno (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2003), 33.
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the potential for use of non-urban environments in bringing about socio-political, and ultimately, urban change5. One thing though is certain; the media and communication tools are not set to change their role anytime in the imaginable future. Much like in Virilio's writings, the presence of media which transmitted live streams of pictures from between Libyan towns during the war once again demonstrated their ubiquity and the ability of instantaneous operation. Nevertheless, once the war was in full swing, the role of the media on the ground wasn't crucial for its outcome. In conclusion, a parallel can be drawn between the two described relationships: the rst, between presence in media and presence in space; and the second, between presence in urban and rural environments. More elaborately, just like expression of opinion has proven to be much more e ective in physical space than via media, so have struggles for change here shown that rural areas sometimes o er much more potential than urban centres. ese characteristics of space, its potential for change and institutional abuse, need to be noted in the ongoing con icts, and to be rethought in spatial practice. And if space is a social product, as far as architects and planners are concerned, when there are obvious needs and tendencies for social change, they need to follow, if they're not leading. Escaping, rather than embracing, the now traditionally urban structures of power, speculation and manipulation, is perhaps something architects and planners could do well to consider
5 Not to say that this change is necessarily for the better. At the time of writing of this text, things are still happening in Libya that can shi the evaluation of the changes in any direction, but that is more due to endemic socio-political factors of tribalism, gang con icts and the like.
`But precisely this shift of attention from the urban centres to the nonurban countryside is perhaps the Libyan Revolution's biggest legacy for urban and architectural theory'
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TAHRIR SQUARE: THE PUBLIC SPACE REVISITED.
Noheir Elgendy
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Noheir El Gendy is A PhD candidate in Architecture and Urban Design at Polytechnic University in Milan, an Assistant Lecturer of Architecture and Urban Design at Cairo University, and a visiting Lecturer in Landscape Architecture and Urbanism at Kingston University in London. Noheir also has a specialized Masters degree in Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning and has a substantial professional experience in design practice both in Egypt and Italy. Noheir's work focuses on the study of city transformation from a landscape urbanism viewpoint. She is particularly interested in the study of informalities and their impact on the city fabric.
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Tahrir Square February 11th, 2011. . � Digital Globe.
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e contemporary transformation of the city displays a profound redrawing of the contours of public and private spaces. is produced a vigorous debate in architecture and urbanism on the transformation of public space: on the one hand discourses that lamented the `end of public space'1 and, on the other, contrasting opinions that advocated new forms of public space located in private spaces for collective use or in alternative spaces such as wastelands or parking lots2 . ough the notion of public space has been continuously rede ned and reinterpreted, the drastic changes that accompanied the process of ` occupying squares and streets' , have introduced a new perception of these spaces that mixes between the private and the public, which requires revisiting the term `public space'. Tahrir square was one of the spaces which has lived that experience. e occupation of the square for days changed the signi cance and the role of the space. Within the square, boundaries have been rede ned, notions have been set and values have been practiced . e square was a model that was tested to prove practically their ability to change. e square was turned into a `state within the state', not just as a concept , but functionally containing the components on which the origins of the civil state was made. It was a form of a heterotopia with de nite boundaries and controlled access points, containing overlapping activities and spaces, and housing people, with their di erent social, economic and political backgrounds. e polis- the ideal of the city state- tried to realize the good life via equilibrium between the public sphere (agora) ,the private sphere (oikos) ,and the sacred sphere (acropolis and necropolis).Tahrir square, during the eighteen days of the revolution and onwards, physically and spiritually , included these three spheres. Firstly the public sphere, the Agora e square turned into a political platform housing di erent political views, discussions and debates. Egyptians from di erent backgrounds were o en seeing and truly interacting with each other for the rst time. e square was divided into di erent zones of public expression. Everyone expressed his opinion in his own way, through discussions, billboards, paintings, speeches and even comedian sketches. e entry to the square would start by chanting songs in a ceremonial way to encourage the new comers to join the free Egypt at Tahrir. At the center of the square was the platform, which was dedicated for announcements and speeches, and allowed everyone to join and express his opinion. en, all over the square, there were galleries, expressing grief, passion and hope through art, in addition to a collection of singers which has produced new songs expressing their new feelings of freedom. Tahrir became the locus of self-expression. e process of discussing and sharing ideas in di erent scales, have rede ned the meaning of the square for many people who have been deprived from practicing democracy for a long time. e square has made it possible to be an active member within the society ,thus encouraged thousands to take part in this process of decision making and de ning the demands.
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Michael Sorkin, ed, Variations on a eme Park, the New American City and the End of Public Space, (New York: Hill & Wang, 1992). John Chase, Margaret Crawford, and Kaliski John, eds, Everyday Urbanism, (New York: e Monacelli Press, 1999).
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Secondly the private sphere, the Oikos e square also included lots of activities that fall into the private sector of the state. It was turned from a roundabout to into a huge campsite accommodating people for days. Enriched by the feeling that the square belonged to them, and de ning its borders, the square was totally redesigned to accommodate people's during the sit-in. e square included a diversity of functions. First was the campsites including tents for sleeping purposes and attached to food stalls, water tanks and toilets. Secondly, was the Bloggers camp, which formed the media center of the square , spreading the word and sharing news about the square, in addition to the newspaper wall which gathered people everyday morning to catch up with the latest news and allowed discussions and debates. en there were the makeshi clinics and pharmacies, which adopted the healthcare of the square due to the continuous confrontations that lead to lots of injuries. In addition to the kindergarten, which housed children of people ,who wanted to join the protests, and organized some creative activities to form a sort of informal learning in the square . Finally were the Flag sellers, which formed a sort of a market that was then extended to house food and drinks. All these di erent activities, were housed in the same space, sometimes overlapping or taking shi s , one a er the other. A tour through the square was a tour through a state structure that went beyond the idea of being a public space. irdly the Sacred Sphere As the Greek polis sacred sphere included the temple (Acropolis) and the cemetery (Necropolis), also the values that the square symbolized to the people gave it a level of sacredness. e square was the embodiment of people demands and values. e fact that people wanted to protect the square and were prepared to die to keep it, shows that the square was not just the space that housed the revolution but also a symbol for all the dreams and hopes for the revolutionary Utopia that they sought to create. ey hoped that this Utopia in which they set their new values, would be able then to spread around their country. Even within the square borders they practiced certain ethical values which then called the Ethics of the square. Tahrir Square also became the symbol of liberation. It became the site where hundreds of thousands of Egyptians found personal Liberation and practiced the values of equality, integrity, unity and dignity. e square occupation for days turning it into a `state within the state' as a new model for the country to be experimented, gave a new dimension for the notion of the public spaces that should be readdressed. e square which has long been an eyewitness on the political, social and economic changes in the society, now became a counterpart of it. e process of occupation squares has highlighted the relation between the public spaces and the people and turned them into icons across the world
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`The square was turned into a `state within the state', not just as a concept, but functionally containing the components on which the origins of the civil state was made ... '
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TOP-DOWN/BOTTOM-UP URBANISM. *
Nashid Nabian and Carlo Ratti
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How can a city perform as an open-source real-time system?, Wiki City
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Illustration by Kristian Kloeckl, MIT SENSEable City Lab.
e text is based on a book chapter by the same authors pub* lished in O enhuber, D., & Schechtner, K. (Eds.). (2012). Inscribing a Square: Urban Data as Public Space. Springer
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Nashid Nabian has a Master's degree in Architectural Engineering from Shahid Beheshti University and a Master's degree in Urban Design from the University of Toronto where she received the Toronto Association of Young Architects award. Since 2003, she has been partner at Arsh Design Studio, a Tehran-based architecture o ce both nationally and internationally recognized for its projects in venues such as Agha Khan Award for Architecture and World Architecture Festival. She holds a Doctor of Design degree from the Harvard Graduate School of Design. Nashid's research focuses on how novel technologies can impact the spatial experience by soliciting the needs and desires of inhabitants or users. She has taught graduate seminar and design studio courses at Harvard, Toronto University, Rice University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Her research has been showcased in various venues, including the ACADIA, IEEE Digital Ecosystems Conference; the UCMedia Conference on User-Centric Media, the Mobile Multimedia Communications Conference, Toronto's Nuit Blanche Annual Event, New Orleans' American Institute of Architects DesCours Festival, and SEED Magazine. Currently, she is a postdoctoral fellow at MIT Senseable City Lab, while holding a lecturer position in the Department of Architecture at Harvard Graduate School of Design. Carlo Ratti is an architect and engineer by training, he practices in Italy and teaches at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he directs the Senseable City Lab. He graduated from the Politecnico di Torino and the �cole Nationale des Ponts et Chauss�es in Paris, and later earned his MPhil and PhD at the University of Cambridge, UK. Ratti has co-authored over 100 scienti c papers and holds several patents. His work has been exhibited worldwide at venues such as the Venice Biennale, the Design Museum Barcelona, the Science Museum in London, GAFTA in San Francisco and e Museum of Modern Art in New York. His Digital Water Pavilion at the 2008 World Expo was hailed by Time Magazine as one of the Best Inventions of the Year. He has been included in Esquire Magazine's Best and Brightest list and in Blueprint Magazine's 25 People who will Change the World of Design. Ratti recently served as the inaugural Innovator in Residence in ueensland, Australia.
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e 1965 exhibition Architecture Without Architects, shown at the Museum of Modern Art, and the accompanying book Architecture Without Architects: A Short Introduction to Non-pedigreed Architecture by Bernard Rudofsky, provided a unique view into what Rudofsky de ned as "communal vernacular," "anonymous," "spontaneous," "indigenous," "rural," "non-formal," "non-classi ed," or "non-pedigreed" architecture, or, architecture created by anonymous, untutored builders who used their good sense to handle practical problems in a synergetic relationship with the environment, implicitly criticizing the narrow orthodoxy of a discipline preoccupied with "architectural nobility" and the work of individual masters. In architectures without architects, the inhabited environments were inspired and directly shaped by their inhabitants. 1 Not long before the exhibition, John Habraken, proposed a model that provided a platform for soliciting the participation of users and residents in the process of building mass-housing projects. In this model, the physical structure of the buildings was conceptually separated into support components and in ll components. While the supporting infrastructure would be provided by the state, the in ll components were envisioned as housing units that people themselves could build on top of or in the middle of the provided infrastructure.2 Over a decade a er Architecture Without Architects was rst published, Christopher Alexander and his co-authors of the 1977 book A Pattern Language provided an "opensource" methodology for giving people a say in designing their own environments through the use of 253 patterns, or working documents that could be mixed and matched, adjusted and supplemented as needed. Each pattern both described an environmental problem and provided the core of its solution, creating an in nite variety of combinations of multi-layered problems and their corresponding multilayered solutions.3 In a way, all of these alternative ways of thinking about designing built environments were criticizing a centrally planned urbanism favored during the decades following World War II. Promoting a bottom-up paradigm and an innovative way of involving a city's inhabitants in conceiving, constructing, and repairing their city, all the above mentioned works echoed Jane Jacobs' critique of those modernist planning policies as destroying inner-city communities by creating dysfunctional settings that ignore local details and human-centered considerations in favor of the "big picture" envisioned by
1 Bernard Rudofsky, Architecture without architects, an introduction to non-pedigreed architecture (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1964):1-9. 2 NJ Habraken, Supports: An alternative to mass housing (London: Architectural Press, 1972): 59-61. 3 Christopher Alexander, Sara Ishikawa, Murray Silverstein, Max Jacobson, Ingrid Fiksdahl-King, and Shlomo Angel, A Pattern Language (New York: Oxford University Press, 1977).
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Top-Down/Bottom-Up Urbanization. Nashid Nabian and Carlo Ratti
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master planners and architects. Unfortunately, although inspiring as an approach in addressing the shortcoming of the modernism's top-down paradigms of city building, and going back to a timeless way of building, these approaches have failed to revolutionize the way we build cities. ere is a revealing sentence in the Oregon Experiment by Christopher Alexander,, where a er advocating for participation he states: "Participation will create chaos."4 And, in his most recent book, the Nature of Order:- "the idea of involving users in the discussion, hearing their con icting visions, trying to reconcile opposing points of view-can become a political and administrative nightmare." 5 However, the past few years have demonstrated how new technologies can allow an unprecedented number of people to collaborate. Consider how during the series of 2011 events dubbed the "Arab Spring," the combination of Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Foursquare drastically changed both the political landscape of the Middle East and the global understanding of resistance and resilience.6 In a di erent socio-political setting, the very same digital tools were used by the "Occupy movement" to orchestrate largescale protests in major U.S. cities in 2011. It is therefore logical to ask: could these very technologies have an impact on city building? Could they lead to a more democratic, bottom-up approach to urbanism? While it might be too early to get a de nitive answer, we would like to review some reasons why we believe this might be the case. First, there is the issue of information. In order to address urban problems, citizens must have access to information that will allow them to make well-informed daily decisions about how to e ectively use resources and navigate their surroundings, as well as engaging in the decision-making processes of conceiving, constructing, and managing their environments. New Information and Communication Technology (ICT) are making this possible to an unprecedented extent. Real-time tra c information allows citizens to make mobility decisions; location-speci c information about cultural and commercial o erings allows them to decide how to best navigate the landscape of urban opportunities; real-time information that cross-associates their individual carbon footprints with pollution levels can e ectively impact their energy consumption, and the list goes on. To this e ect, democratizing access to urban information � as it is happening with open data initiatives all across the world - allows citizens to participate in optimizing how the space of the city is used. Second, ICTs can facilitate innovative solutions to urban problems by leveraging the culture, contemporary practice, and well-established models of user-generated, content-sharing and collaborative, knowledge-production platforms like subject4 Christopher Alexander et al., e Oregon Experiment (New York : Oxford University Press, 1975):45. 5 Christopher Alexander, e Nature of Order : an essay on the art of building and the nature of the universe (Berkeley, Calif. : Center for Environmental Structure, 2002-c2005): 261. 6 For more examples, please see: Carlo Ratti and Anthony Townsend, " e Social Nexus," Scienti c American, September 2011: 41-48
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speci c open forums and wikis. is approach is not new to design: one existing model is OpenIDEO, an online social platform launched by the technological design company IDEO. Since August of 2010, OpenIDEO has actively solicited the involvement of a global community of designers and the public in important social projects.7 It's online platform o ers room for all interested parties to directly contribute ideas or relevant information that may inspire other designers. e underlying force of this and other crowdsourcing platforms is the fact that an active, globally connected crowd can outperform the internal design teams of professional, technology-based "innovation" companies. e goal is not to promote one model over the other, but to orchestrate collaborations amongst teams of technological experts, innovation companies, venture capital startups, academic research and development institutions, and the members of a broader community of socially pro-active and technologically savvy individuals. Furthermore, bottom-up urbanism can introduce a paradigmatic shi in how we design, build, maintain, and inhabit our cities. Conceptual forerunners like Architectures Without Architects utilized the genius of the crowd using elementary models of knowledge sharing. Now, modern online platforms for collaborative idea-generation and sharing, such as the Open Architecture Network launched by Architecture for Humanity, can transform architectural design from copyrighted phenomena into the property of the Creative Commons. is means that anyone can access blueprints and design schemes for each and every space within the city, using interactive so ware applications, relational data, and parametric inter-connectivity. ese collaborative networks can also provide a platform for people to share how they receive, evaluate, and critique a particular design for the city they live in. e same model can also be deployed to create new, collaborative paradigms for funding urban/infrastructural projects through digitally mediated micro-donations, as well as envisioning ecologies of mass-ownership, or mass-authorship for large-scale urban initiatives and projects. 8 From democratizing access to real-time urban information, to providing cyber platforms that allow people to participate in addressing and solving urban challenges, to crowdsourcing the collection of information about how the city operates and is used, we believe that the coming years might be full of promise for the "bottom" up paradigm of how our cities are planned, conceived, built, inhabited, managed, and restored or repaired (as in the case of natural disasters or civic con icts). In short, a continuous and innovative re-programming of the built environment by its own inhabitants
7 For more information on the platform, please visit it at http://www.openideo.com/ 8 Examples of such platforms already in operation are www.sponsume.com/ and www.kickstarter.com/, which both allow their users to solicit funding and support for the their projects by capitalizing on the potential of social networks.
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`Furthermore, bottom-up urbanism can introduce a paradigmatic shift in how we design, build, maintain, and inhabit our cities.'
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THINK THE UN-THINKABLE! THINK 2050! Thoughts from a Digital Native's Perspective.
Daniel Dendra
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Daniel Dendra is anOtherArchitect, living between Berlin and Moscow. He graduated at the UCL in London and was working amongst others at Zaha Hadid Architects in London and A.M.O in Rotterdam. In 2007, he set up a collaborative design studio with the focus on sustainable solutions called `anOtherArchitect' in Berlin. Extending the ideas of a aA Berlin as multidisciplinary platform Daniel cofounded the OpenSource design network OpenSimSim in 2009 which was exhibited at the XII Architectural Biennale in Venice. Ever since follow up collaborations such as the Cloudscap.es Award, OpenJapan or the FutureCityLab were initiated by him with di erent partners. A er teaching at di erent universities in the UK, France and Germany Daniel Dendra is currently visiting professor at the Architecture Faculty in Alghero (University of Sassari).
. (anOtherArchitect) UCL . A.M.O . (anOtherArchitect) aA OpenSimSim . . FutureCityLab , Cloudscap.es OpenJapan . ( )
Physical model: OPENpod � Open Simsim
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During my lifetime I experienced an ever fasting changing society mainly due to technological advances and inventions. If I imagine I would live another 35 years I would experience around the year 2050 a society that is based on complete di erent principles then we know today. Also I would experience a completely changed climate: meteorologists and other scientist predict that by 2050 the regular summer in Europe will have the temperatures of the heat wave anomaly in 2003. Due to the heat wave more than 40.000 people died in Europe mainly in urban areas where the impact was increased by the urban heat island e ect. For me as an architect and urban planner that mean that we have to re-think how we built our cities that have to cope with a di erent climate. Another big task is that our cities and buildings need to consume ZERO CO2 by 2050 otherwise the climate change will surpass the 2-3 degrees scenario with much worse e ects on our environment and us as a species. Now you could argue that this is a task for upcoming generations and that we cannot do much with our current technological toolset. But please consider that a building that we built today will most likely still exist in 2050. So we have to consider its impact in the future. Also we have a lead time of around 20 years if we are talking about urban design and urban planning so 2050 is the day a er tomorrow. We have to start thinking the un-thinkable today. We have to think 2050 whenever we design. Of course this might sound like an impossible task and I agree on this: It�s an impossible task for a single person like we understand architecture today. We have to share all our existing knowledge and connect with the means that we have today in order to make a change and design future proof. e Arab Spring is only one of the events that proved to us that we are able to think the un-thinkable if we CONNECT! Within the last 10 years we saw most of our businesses and known social systems being transformed by a phenomenon called the net moment. Encyclopedic books were replaced by Wikipedia; news distribution re-invented by twitter. Even whole countries have transformed within weeks with the help of social media. In the beginning the internet was used for connecting machines. Today the web2.0 is mainly connecting people with each other and we have become innovative and inventive with these new possibilities: We invented couch-sur ng and airbnb which will probably cause a net moment in the hotel industry. We invented car2gether and inc which will cause a net moment in the car rental industry. We invented youtube and ustream which will cause a net moment in the TV industry. e list of little revolutions is almost endless and it shows that many of known industries are just about to pass into a new area. Now we are at the fringe of passing to the web 3.0: we are connecting our environment (things) to people. e "internet of things" can connect our plants with the www and we receive a tweet to remind us that our green friend needs water (botanicals). Tower Bridge is sending out tweets whenever it is opening. is might seem like a fun game but imagine if Tower Bridge is on your way to work! In this case it might be valuable information.
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Think the un-thinkable! Think 2050! Daniel Dendra
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e internet of things will lead to smarter and more sustainable environments and cities. So if we imagine our cities in 2050 we have to assume that they have passed their net moment already.
PREDICTIONS
Our cities will be populated by the digital natives' generation and it�s descendants. It�s hard to imagine how technology and our society will evolve over the next forty years. Especially for architects, we are very bad with predictions - imagine the utopian visions of architects from the sixties compared to cartoonists who have predicted the future more accurate with Dick Tracy's phone watch becoming a real device today. So can we as planners really predict the future of smart cities in 2050? Maybe NOT. But if we should start peering through the looking glass in order to consider a possible future and not waste too many resources thinking of a lifestyle that is already pass�. Any company in the world has a roadmap and a strategic planning that considers how the future of their technology will a ect their businesses. Even computer chip developers that are on the spearhead of technological revolution have such a roadmap. For our most important environment: our cities we do not have such a roadmap! We think and act as if there is no tomorrow. Together with around ten universities and leading thinkers, designers and engineers we founded the Future City Lab in 2011 in order to start the discussion and use the power of crowd-sourcing in order to start thinking about urban roadmaps. All our knowledge and research will be spread openly in open-source manner. We started as a group of individuals and by now we do self fund our hobby. Each member has a certain expertise that is contributed to the network. I would like brie y to touch open some topics that concern my own interest.
2050
Instead of imagining completely new technologies I would rather like to investigate some recently established or emerging phenomena in order to predict how they could help us to achieve a more sustainable life in the future. is brief study will include (1) sharing, (2) crowd funding, (3) cocreation and (4) gaming. Some years ago social media platforms were considered playgrounds for bored high school
1) Sharing
Tempelhof - sharing � Open Simsim
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Think the un-thinkable! Think 2050! Daniel Dendra
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students. Today Facebook has the third largest "population" in the world only exceeded by India and China. With this social revolution we also have a revolution of sharing thoughts, knowledge, and goods via the internet. In future sharing will become a crucial part of our social life. We do not need to own a car - we will share it since we are only interested in the mobility aspect. is will mean we will not have so many cars blocking our streetscapes anymore. In terms of architecture this will probably mean that we will need to pay attention to semi-public spaces and sharing rooms. It�s easy now to share the drill inside a multi-story house since you can track it with RFID codes and you can book it through your social neighborhood platform.
VORTEILE F�R DIE STADTVERWALTUNG
THF PARK
THF PARK
THF ONLINE
Finanzierung einzelner Projekte durch crowd funding. Transparenter Park : Beteiligung der B�rger am Entscheidungsprozess und Verantwortung. Spart Zeit da Prozesse nicht durch lange Auswahlverfahren entschieden werden m�ssen.
business
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Mehr Einnahmen f�r die Stadtkasse durch Verkauf von Lizensen. Vor einer Veranstaltung ist absehbar wie viele Menschen kommen werden.
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Den n�chsten Gig ank�ndigen
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Leute mit gleichen Interessen tre en
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Mehr Besucher im Park. Parknutzer sind am Instandhaltungsprozess beteiligt dadurch weniger Besch�digungen.
More and more ideas are nanced by so called crowd-funding platforms. Creatives, for instance, can propose projects on KICKSTARTER. e funders get in return a product, special treat or another bene t. Reaching the net moment we will apply crowd funding platforms to our cities, neighborhoods and streets. A dog owner will be willing to give 5EUR for a new dog running lawn in the park if he can directly bene t from it. Residents of a street will be willing to fund the trees in their street if they will bene t from a better microclimate in summer. A direct bene t is that people who funded something speci c are much more willing to take care of such investments. Vandalism will decrease and it will be a win-win situation for both the city and the inhabitants.
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Ol�! Meu nome e j�ssica, eu trabalho em uma empresa de publicidade e eventos em bel�m(PA), e tamb�m fa�o parte da organiza��o do projeto garagem musical, venho aqui para fazer-lhes uma proposta de patrocinio. Garagem festival, tem o intuito de realizar shows e apresenta��es de bandas, cantores e djs, regionais, nacionais e futuramente internacionais, visando atingir um publico adulto e jovem( UM GRANDE PUBLICO). O "E ect Noise" em sua primeira edi��o, ser�
Bilder teilen
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Ol�! Meu nome e j�ssica, eu trabalho em uma empresa de publicidade e eventos em bel�m(PA), e tamb�m fa�o parte da organiza��o do projeto garagem musical, venho aqui para fazer-lhes uma proposta de patrocinio. Garagem festival, tem o intuito de realizar shows e apresenta��es de bandas, cantores e djs, regionais, nacionais e futuramente internacionais, visando atingir um publico adulto e jovem( UM GRANDE PUBLICO). O "E ect Noise" em sua primeira edi��o, ser�
Kostenloses Natur-Monitoring durch crowdsourcing. Mehr Bewusstsein f�r den Naturschutz der Parkbesucher.
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Ol�! Meu nome e j�ssica, eu trabalho em uma empresa de publicidade e eventos em bel�m(PA), e tamb�m fa�o parte da organiza��o do projeto garagem musical, venho aqui para fazer-lhes uma proposta de patrocinio. Garagem festival, tem o intuito de realizar shows e apresenta��es de bandas, cantores e djs, regionais, nacionais e futuramente internacionais, visando atingir um publico adulto e jovem( UM GRANDE PUBLICO). O "E ect Noise" em sua primeira edi��o, ser�
Schlage Veranstaltungen vor
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3) Co-creation / crowdsourcing
A change in governance will automatically lead in new models of participation processes. In Switzerland the shape of new buildings was marked with sticks so that people could imagine it�s impact and intervene if necessary. Using new technologies such as augmented reality we will be able to translate such models and use the intelligence of locals in order to improve our designs. With simple interfaces and everyone in the world having access to these tools, there will be a critical mass that will allow for such systems to work without a certain elite being able to manipulate processes.
4) Gaming
e gaming industry overtook the lm industries in terms of turn-over a couple of years ago. Since millions of people are navigating in virtual environments and making conscious decisions that they re ect from their everyday life, we will be able to utilize this in order to test new urban environments before they are built. Instead of simulating the impact on people, tra c ow etc. we will be able to test them in a virtual environment. e most successful models can be extracted from the virtual world into our real cities. e points mentioned above are not predictions but an invitation to all of us to continue thinking about these issues and preparing ourselves for the net moment. One fact is certain: before our cities will be transformed by the net moment there will be a shi in our profession. e profession of the architect and urban planner will be transformed. We can either ignore it as the big encyclopedic publishers did with Wikipedia or we can see it as an opportunity. Help us to think the un-thinkable. Join the future at www. rctlb.com
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sharing design knowledge make architecture accessible to more people
www.openSourceArchitectureProcess.com
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feedback and comments by design community
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feedback and comments possibility to build 1:1 scale prototypes
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A MYRIAD OF LITTLE CHANGES.
Participatory Urbanism & an Interview with Maria Nicanor, Curator of the BMW Guggenheim Lab.
Nicol� Gobini
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Nicol� Gobini is an architect and researcher. He studied architecture and business economics in Italy and France. He received his master's with a focus on the relation between architecture and the media from the faculty of Architecture at the Politecnico di Milano in Italy. He lives and works in Milan.
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New York City Design architect: Atelier Bow-Wow. Interior view showing the interactive installation Urbanology. Photo: Roger Kisby � Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation
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e city, for many people, is a place of rapid change. It must be the rst time in history that more than y percent of the population is living in a city, and that means a stress on economic interests, and logically that also puts a stress on speed and new technologies. Perhaps it is for all these reasons but one thing that is certain is that participation in the urban debate is a cross-sectional and ever increasing phenomenon. It is not only that universities, large corporations and city governments invest in the city and urban issues as a research territory; it is also the residents themselves who actively participate in the urban debates and choose the city as a place for public initiatives. Citizens come together in committees, they establish relationships, they share images and thus build their expectations and together design future scenarios. More o en it is individuals and not just experts who create networks, take the initiative, and develop unpredictable projects for the use of public space. e participation of di erent subjects in urban debates not only responds to recent international development policies for the territory, but also constitutes a spontaneous phenomenon, whether observed through the lter of any social network, an Internet share site or a social interaction project. All this occurs also thanks to the use of open-source technology that today facilitates the exchange of large quantities of information and ideas. ese ideas and information are then turned into urban stories and into a myriad of little changes in the use of public space. Each little change corresponds to the need to make a place personal and friendly. is turns the city into a vital organism and this in turn encourages thinking about more conscious projects for public areas. In an op-ed of the New City Reader (issue 15: Local) the sociologist and global theorist, Saskia Sassen, explains how all these multiple small interventions and micro changes, if observed in their entirety, add signi cance to the notion of the incompleteness of cities, in other words to the city's capacity to react and thereby surviving other more powerful entities and thus to change. e public re ects and actively modi es the relationship between the city, architecture and society, a subject that brings to mind the XIV Triennale of Milan in 1968 created and organized by Giancarlo De Carlo and lately reported by Paola Nicolin in the book "Castelli di carte" ( uodlibet, Macerata 2011). e theme of the exhibit � the "Grande Numero" - was proposed as a project of dialogue with society through the use of complex installations to interact with the public and recount the modern city's transformations. Unfortunately people were not able to see this exhibit due to the opening day protest that closed it down. It was destroyed by a group of architects and intellectuals who were probably afraid by the vision of a participatory project that would tell the facts of the city far from academic rules. Participation is, instead, the beginning of a change in "making the city". Citizens before experts, then, but this certainly does not mean the end of the specialization. It is, instead, a question of dialogue and knowledge that creates aspirations, visions and good projects and of course founds the designer's responsibility to the community. Public sharing and open-source technologies support and accelerate the
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change, quickly responding to needs and building platforms of urban data. But if the information is not nalized and put into action then it becomes a useless gathering of information about good intentions. Technologists, urban planners and artists have begun to create methods for a dialogue project with the community and social technologies. However this capacity is not enough to build new planning vocabularies. You need places and tools in order to listen, interpret and give back the richness of the imagination working for a richer and plural city. Mediators will obviously be needed. e catalysts of such a diverse urban imagination for instance are experimental projects that are created thanks to the perception and ambition of their curators. ese are projects that demonstrate shared talent, imagination and ideas and o en use both real space locally and virtual space globally as laboratories and places for public debate. Maria Nicanor and David van der Leer, both curators at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum of New York, are the creators of the BMW Guggenheim Lab, an international laboratory of urban experiments and public initiatives, travelling through nine cities over a six-year period. e project favours international and inter-disciplinary public debate led by new talents from di erent sectors who are able to propose new possible scenarios for the future of our cities. During the rst stop of New York, the participation in meetings was as extraordinary as the 325,000 web visitors from 139 countries, the 48,000 likes on facebook, the 38,000 connections to youtube and 3,400 followers on twitter. Now it is Berlin and then Mumbai's turn, where the rst cycle of the Lab will end.
[Nicol� Gobini] How did the idea of BMW Guggenheim Lab start? Can you explain us brie y the genesis and initial objectives of the project? [Maria Nicanor] David and myself have a strong interest in cities and see it as a responsibility (that also museums cannot neglect) to address the most pressing issues in these dense metropolitan areas around the world, and to generate more awareness of the workings of cities for the people living in them. A er a decade that was o en driven by an urban analysis in terms of data, maps and visualization we felt the need for a project that was more about people, about experiences, and about new ideas on how to make city life in a variety of contexts
Maria Nicanor. Curator, BMW Guggenheim Lab. Photo: C. Nicanor
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A Myriad of Little Changes. Nicol� Gobini
Diagram illustrating one cycle of the BMW Guggenheim Lab � 2010 e Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation
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Diagram illustrating one venue of the: BMW Guggenheim Lab : � 2010 e Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation
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better. We wanted to create a platform for the public that would require active participation. erefore, about two years ago we wrote our dream proposal and came up with the Lab's structure and content. e Lab is an indication of new tendencies in museum practice that favor active experiences rather than passive contemplation. We nd it fascinating that we get to run a project like this from a museum. It could have easily been a city government initiative to active public spaces, for instance. Instead, we are running it from a cultural institution. is allows us to address very serious issues with creativity and certain exibility. We need to consider real life urban situations from within cultural institutions in the same way that we address art, design and other creative representations. Topics like the economic crisis, socio-political and environmental issues are matters that we should be addressing from our architecture and urban program, and that is precisely what the Lab aims to do. [NG] Public participation has a central role in the project and this is con rmed by the success that the website, blog and social networks are having. How do you de ne the phenomenon of participatory urbanism? [MN] When we rst approached Atelier BowWow, we asked Yoshi and Momo for a noniconic structure that would be user-friendly, exible and mobile. What they came up with was a highly simple, yet sophisticated rectangular armature composed of Carbon Fiber beams and mesh. We've been calling it the ` ying toolbox' because it houses within it's upper compartment all the technical and practical materials one might need to host a workshop or lecture, a lm
screening or performance. Atelier Bow-Wow's toolbox is a container that not only organizes, carries, and protects the users' tools--which may range from furniture pieces to equipment for experiments, to high-tech electronics, to lowtech workshop gear--but that also invites its users to carefully rethink the possible purpose of each of them. e design is also a powerful manifestation of the ideals and logic of the Lab � it has no walls and is completely responsive to visitor needs; it is the ultimate soap-box, giving people a platform to gather, amplify their voices, and illustrate their ideas. I mention the design of the Lab in such detail because it is designed in such a way that it limits the curatorial voice and gives primacy to the program participants and the public � it's a participatory experience that only works with the input of citizens and people working together with us. By controlling less and inviting people to join the discussion more, we aim to empower the public to be a part of the process. Anyone can step up and act in a leadership capacity at the Lab and this is the essence of what participatory urbanism is. When the end result is not premeditated, it puts a certain amount of pressure on the community to contribute. Having a exible curatorial framework that allows for crowd-sourced content and visitor participation is critical to supporting a creative process that prizes innovation and intervention. In addition, creating a physical space that incites participation rather than passivity is also a key component of what we are doing at the Lab and what Atelier Bow-Wow's design testi es to.
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[NG] What is the di erence between the approach of an expert and the public to an urban initiative as the BMW Guggenheim Lab? [MN] We feel it's as simple as the space democratizing the conversation. A welldesigned space can change people's behavior. e architects of the Lab are big believers in this principle. is is not to underestimate the value of experts. Expertise is very valuable and very much needed. We don't see it as a hierarchy question, but rather as a dialogue where both parties can learn from each other. [NG] New York, Berlin and Mumbai. What was the selection process for the rst three stops of the lab? [MN] Many cities were considered for this project. We envision the BMW Guggenheim Lab as a self-contained, mobile forum; for this reason, it could thrive in any dense urban landscape where topics speci c to the city are relevant. New York, Berlin, and Mumbai are all international hubs for culture, politics, media and science. Not only do these cities promise us ample opportunities for urban analysis, but their rich historical legacies grant us innumerable possibilities for investigating social and political factors related to this cycle's theme, Confronting Comfort. [NG] What was the rst show you curated, and how did it impact your future direction as a curator? [MN] David and I have curated a variety of shows, but the rst show we worked on together at the Guggenheim was the Frank Lloyd Wright exhibition that celebrated the 50th anniversary
`A well-designed space can change people's behavior.'
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of the construction of the Guggenheim Museum in New York. It was a fantastic learning experience for both of us � and a fun adventure too to go through his drawings and archives that are stored in the middle of the desert in the FLW Foundation in Arizona. It was more important than we might have realized at the time to go back to Wright's architecture and urban principles, which we have seen come back again and again in other contemporary shows and projects that we have worked on � his principles are still so incredibly relevant today! We both have an interest in contemporary urban practice, but starting the journey at the Guggenheim with Frank Lloyd Wright was the best thing that could happen to us
opposite page: : Lab Cycle 1 Logo: BMW Guggenheim: : Designer: Sulki & Min, Seoul, South Korea � 2011 Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation
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A RADICAL CHANGE IN PERCEPTION. Why we need a Human-Centered Globalism.
Meredith Hutcheson
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Meredith Hutcheson has been working with CouchSur ng's communications department for three years. Her focus is on community engagement through social media and storytelling. She has lived on ve continents and believes passionately in the internet's power to bring people of all cultures together.
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CouchSur ng weekly meet up in Cairo. �Couchsur ng� Images courtesy of: Ahmed Ben-Wahid
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As studies have convincingly proven, dehumanization of the "other" consistently facilitates con ict throughout the world. e United States has had soldiers in Iraq for eight years, and in Afghanistan for 10; the con ict in Darfur is said to have claimed 400,000 lives and displaced over 2,500,000 people; violence and death are ongoing in the Middle East and no resolution is in sight. All of these con agrations have di erent root causes, but the violent acts that occur within them would not be possible without the ability of each side to dehumanize the other. Anthropologists Asheley Mantagu and Floyd Matson have written of this dynamic as the " h horseman of the apocalypse" because of the immeasurable damage that occurs when we fall into the pattern of seeing unknown people as things rather than humans. e world today is growing ever more connected, or so the argument goes. We speak of globalism and interconnectivity, and in many ways, our quotidian lives brush on the international more than ever before in history. Cultures are meeting and colliding in ways they never have before. As the world grows more interconnected, individuals are beginning to hear far more about cultures other than their own. Sometimes what they are told is accurate, but o en what they are told is generalized or biased. If we fail to evolve our human globalization alongside corporate globalization, we risk accepting such incorrect portrayals as fact, and in the process dehumanizing those of other cultures. Direct interaction, on a personal level, between members of di erent cultures is the strongest defense against prejudice or clich�. ere will always be those who try to dehumanize people that they see as enemies in order to convince citizens to support con ict. e more that people from di erent backgrounds have spent meaningful time with one another, the more di cult it will be to convince them that violent con ict is the most reasonable way to resolve a di erence of agenda. is is the dynamic that CouchSur ng counteracts. To date, nearly 4 million people in over 230 countries and territories have joined CouchSur ng.org. ey contact one another in order to stay in each other's homes when travelling, or meet for co ee, attend events, or to discuss ideas online. While the act of hosting and visiting is the heart of the CouchSur ng community, over the years it has developed a richly woven social fabric that encompasses a wide variety of social activities. For example, a young Polish woman may stay with a Chinese family in Beijing and meet up with an Australian traveler one day to visit the Great Wall. Couchsur ng online/o ine community gives people the opportunity to systematically learn about the world and people of other cultures. When a person travels to another country and is welcomed into the home and life of a local, or when someone opens their home to a stranger from another part of the world, it becomes impossible for them to see that person as anything less than human. because beneath the surface, every time that two people who would not otherwise meet together and share their stories, the world becomes slightly more human for each of them. And this is an e ect that we should treat with signi cance.
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A Radical Change in Perception. Meredith Hutcheson
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Stanford University's Institute for Research in Social Sciences has been investigating how CouchSur ng's network builds trust amongst members, using anonymous, public data from our system. Diagrams have been produced (taken from a video study) to show how the e ects extend beyond CouchSur ng members. It is a ripple e ect: even friends of CouchSurfers begin to be drawn into increased interaction with other social circles because of the connecting force of the community. Globalization never extends into our personal and emotional lives. Awareness without connection can play out, paradoxically, as a decrease in openness. And this is why strangers meeting for co ee, or for a homestay, really can be the foundation of change in our world. We can't all travel the world. But the internet a ords each of us the ability to be part of the movement towards a human globalism. It isn't enough merely to be aware of the wider world. We must learn from one another what it means, in the 21st century, to be a member of the global population
Diagrams extracted from video of a study showing the increase and e ect of Couchsur ng society being involved with other social circles. � Couchsur ng
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A Radical Change in Perception. Meredith Hutcheson
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THE WORD ON THE STREET.
Collaborative Traffic Management in Cairo.
Gamal Eldin Sadek
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Gamal ElDin Sadek came up with the name and
the idea of "Bey2ollak" in August 2010 a er a couple of entrepreneurial trials, he has been discussing the idea for a month with his cousin, and weeks later, along with 5 members of his family, they launched Bey2ollak.com! Gamal's work is a mix between "Technology & Art", having his 2009 BSc in Computer Science & being a very passionate photographer, made him a strong asset in the team that plays a crucial role in the translation between the designing and the development processes.
�Bey2ollak� . � www.Bey2ollak.com � .
All images and graphics are courtesy of � Bey2ollak
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In September 2003, thirty experts from around the world gathered at Harvard University to discuss how information and communication technologies (ICTs) can help reduce poverty. Some pointed out the problem of cost; they warned that information technology can become a tool of either decreasing the inequalities that already exist in the world or increasing it. In the words of Onno Purbo from Bandung Institute of Technology in Indonesia: " e barrier [is] actually not the tool. e barrier would be the education process. To educate the society, to share the knowledge within the society, to encourage the society to produce their knowledge in local languages that is a major barrier." All over the world, road tra c is growing faster than road capacity resulting in "tra c congestions". Tra c slowdowns can have a wide range of negative impacts on people and on the business economy, including impacts on air quality (due to additional vehicle emissions), quality of life (due to personal time delays), and business activity (due to the additional costs and reduced service areas for people). Tra c congestion result in economic losses running to an estimated annual cost of �20 billion, would increase to �30 billion by 2010 in the UK alone. Under current social and economic frameworks, there are no known feasible policies that could reduce congestion to zero in practice. Driven by the deteriorating tra c, Egyptians started regularly to communicate friends, family, and coworkers in tra c situations, mainly to warn each other and potentially suggest alternative routes. e idea of Bey2ollak is to work on leveraging the power of mobile technology and the internet, the Bey2ollak team thought to take that same very simple message and broadcast it to a much wider community of people who would gain important insight regarding their routes. us, turning the communication "one to one" based activity to a "one to all" activity.
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The Word on the Street. Gamal El-Din Sadek
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Since its launch in 10/10/2010 , the app got a base of around 200,000 users, with an average increase that amounts to more than 10,000 registered users monthly Bey2ollak is simply an application created to help people gather the social power of the community and re-invest it in the community. e beauty of this speci c application is its simplicity, adaptability and the fact that it uses group intelligence to help a process of decentralized decision making. r F BQQMJDBUJPO JT B EBJMZ QSBDUJDF XIFSF QFPQMF OPU POMZ TIBSF FYQFSJFODFT
CVU UIFZ TIBSF UIF responsibility to help others avoid problems, time loss or some danger, on regular basis o en more than once per/day. r#FZPMMBLJTMJUFSBMMZDPOOFDUJOHQFPQMFJOBNBOOFSUIBUDSFBUFTDPNNPOBXBSFOFTTBOEDPNNPO accountability regarding a general problem, which is a signi cant tool of empowerment to the community. r 'VSUIFS
UIF BQQMJDBUJPO BDRVJSFT JUT JOVFODF BOE DSFEJCJMJUZ GSPN JUT PXO VTFST F MBSHFS CBTF it acquires the more credible and accurate it gets. is mainly implies a higher authority in decision making and in the creation of a common sense that is given to the people at grass root level Bey2ollak is the rst mobile application in Egypt that depends totally on grass root sources for its information (info-use), educating the people in the process to make use of the mobile connectivity in a much more economically viable manner. Notably, other similar applications in the advanced world are focused on providing tra c information services that depends mainly on information gathered centrally using advanced technologies and satellites. Conversely, Bey2ollak depends on crowd sourcing at grass root levels, and that what made the application unique and gave it prevalence and power. In the Arab world, the ability of youth to a ect real change in their world through online networking has been proven. e di usion of mobile networking could be a revolutionary tool not only in the world of politics but in development as well. Bey2ollak has had a considerable success in gathering communal power for people to nd alternative roads and ultimately solutions to a problem that is becoming acute. e same tool can be used to tackle other problems and to aggregate the collective intelligence of society to e ect on the ground change. Bey2ollak also thanks its innate structure is an excellent tool that empowers the concepts of communal decision making, group intelligence and decentralization, all this makes it a tool that can be used creatively in many di erent elds that ranges from monitoring the performance of governments, or the aggregation of news at grass root levels that would empower the practices of civic journalism, up to the channeling an overall public opinion that can create a more representational democracy
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The Word on the Street. Gamal El-Din Sadek
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A[RCH]NATOMIZING SOMALIA
Zain Abuseir
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Zain AbuSeir B.S.Architecture 07, Masters in Architecture 09 with Academic and
Program Distinction, College of Architecture and Urban Planning at the University of Michigan. 2007:A Wallenberg award winner for Coded Space, College of Architecture and Urban Planning at the University of Michigan. 2007: Willeke Portfolio award winner, 2nd place, College of Architecture and Urban Planning at the University of Michigan. 2008 Boston for Unbuilt Architecture winner with Steven Mankouche, Brittany Guercio, and Beth Wilson for L'isola Filtrante. 2006-2007 and 2007-2008: Editor for Dimensions, the annual, student-produced journal of architecture at the University of Michigan. 2009-2011: Worked for RVTR on mapping, GIS analysis,graphic representation, lm and book design; projects included: Conduit Urbanism; North House; Stratus.
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A|rch|natomizing somalia is a collected work investigating the use of architectural representation to anatomize a politically charged site, exploring the potential impact that various types of processed/ ltered/formatted information may have on the ground realities and media coverage of those settings. the site selected is somalia due to the liquid quality of its boundary, complex organizational structure, and lack of action and attention in relation to the rapid deterioration of the political, economic, and social aspects of the country. somalia's unstable political/economic/social con guration causes constant shi ing and expansion of internally displaced people [idp] settlements, refugee camps, and now expanding pirate territory; these factors not only morph the boundary and landscape of somalia, but shake the ecology and dynamics of the country in every sense. e work explores the agency of information taking shape from architectural conventions, modes of analysis, and conceptual theorization. the line, the image, the text, and the mappings are tools working collectively and individually to communicate and reassess existing conditions, decode data, reveal the otherwise hidden information. and to rationalize and spatialize the settings. the three dimensional modeling, gis mapping and analysis expand the current knowledge and reveal hidden relationships. the work thereby expands the conversation to include existing e ects of public policy, address the humanitarian crisis, and project future spatial solutions and conditions. the distribution of the work helps in making the information more accessible, and the people more exposed instead of being withheld from some or all aspects of the situation. e border of somalia has been in ux for hundreds of years, as somalia has lacked a central government since 1991 1, the unstable conditions of the country resulted in 1,46 million internally displaced persons (IDPs), 6,900 asylum-seekers and 1,965 refugees in Somalia 2. e settlements internally displaced people increase in number every year, and for a network of their own within the country of somalia. the network and shi ing boundary of the idp_scape responds to drought, famine, con ict, and now pirates. the increased pirate control and expanding territory started to a ect and shi the idp_scape, pulling the idp boundary in as they attract and recruit people, and pushing the boundary out as the idps move to relocate somewhere safer, morphing the idp_boundary even more. e somali pirates emerged when illegal dumping of waste started in the waters of somalia and sheries were being used illegally by other countries. somalia not having an o cial government could not defend itself. the pirates were provoked to step in and defend their waters and little resources they have. what may have started as defense, became a way of life and providing for their families as they started to gain more control and attack pass-by ships. e unstable political and economic state of somalia is the cause of the shi ing ecologies, landscapes, and boundaries of the internally displaced people and the pirates of somalia. e internally displaced people[idp]_scapes and pirate_scapes have complex networks and forces that start to create a new Somalia that becomes even more di cult to de ne. internally displaced people's[idp] landscape on land and pirate landscape in the water are becoming forces that shape each other's ecologies and somalia's instability and shi ing boundary. the pirates tra c the idp and even recruit them; the idps either move away looking for safer areas or move towards the pirate settlements for jobs. ese are just two of many forces shaping and shi ing these landscapes
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A[rch]natomizing Somalia. Zain AbuSeir.
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health and wellness risk level 4
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A[rch]natomizing Somalia. Zain AbuSeir.
Proposed Aid Plan: Areas at highest health and wellness risk, which are also at clan war risk, or water shortage risk.Creating a safe zone for aid groups to provide aid for health_and_wellness_risk_areas. Eliminating areas_at_ high_risk, leaving behind areas_at_risk which are protected by the un, and therefore safe for aid group and somali people. the idp structure forms its own network, and must be analyzed carefully when plotting un and aid o ces.
areas at risk claimed to be protected areas claimed to be protected areas but are at risk
health and wellness risk level 4
health and wellness risk level 3
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health and wellness risk level 1
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idp : internally displaced people
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idp landscape on land and pirate landscape in the water are becoming forces that shape each other's ecologies and somalia's instability. the pirates tra c idp and even recruit them; the idps either move away looking for safer areas or move towards the pirate setllements for jobs. rst: points of attack of pirates second: expanded water boundary third: chronological tracking of pirates points of attack creates a new boundary fourth: the boundary of somalia expands into the sea to include somali pirate territory opposite: temporally mapping pirate territory and movement
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A[rch]natomizing Somalia. Zain AbuSeir.
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CROSSBENCHING*: HOW TO DESIGN SPACES OF FERTILE FRICTION
Markus Miessen in an interview with Zawia.
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Markus Miessen . Image courtesy of Armin Linke.
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Markus Miessen (*1978, Bonn) is an architect, spatial consultant and writer migrating between Berlin, London, and the Middle East. In 2002, he set up Studio Miessen; a collaborative agency for spatial practice and cultural analysis and in 2007 was founding partner of the now Berlin-based architectural practice nO ce (www.nO ce.eu). Miessen studied at the Glasgow School of Art (BArch), graduated from the Architectural Association in London with Honors (AADiplHons) and received a Master in Research degree from the London Consortium (MRes). He is currently a PhD candidate at the Centre for Research Architecture at Goldsmiths, London. His work has been exhibited widely, at the Lyon, Venice, Performa (NYC), Gwangju, Manifesta, and Shenzhen biennials, and has received various awards and prizes from many places including the Flemisch Government (Brussels), Stimuleringsfonds voor Architectuur (Amsterdam), Kultursti ung des Bundes (Berlin), the Henry Saxon Snell Prize, and was nominated for the RIBA Silver Medal. In 2010, Miessen was selected for the Long list (100) for the Preis der Nationalgalerie f�r Junge Kunst (Berlin) and became a member of the European Cultural Parliament. Miessen is frequently co-organizing conferences, curating exhibitions, and is teaching and lecturing at many international institutions. In 2008 he initiated and is now directing the Winter School Middle East (Dubai/ Kuwait). In 2010, he also worked as a Harvard fellow on a research project in Kuwait, with Joseph Grima. From 2004-08 Miessen taught as a Unit Master at the Architectural Association (London), in 2009/10 he was Visiting Professor at the Berlage Institute (Rotterdam), from 2010-12 he is Visiting Professor at the Hochschule f�r Gestaltung (Karlsruhe) and the Haute Ecole d'Art et de Design, HEAD (Geneva). From October 2011, Miessen will launch a new professorship for Critical Spatial Practice at the Staatliche Hochschule f�r Bildende K�nste, St�delschule (Frankfurt).
[Zawia] In this issue of Zawia themed `Change', we are discussing the implications of the rapidly changing political and social realities on architecture and the role of the architect. One of the ideas that we will discuss is the e ect of `connectedness' of networked individuals on possible futures of architecture and urbanism. Within your views on participation shi ing away from populist romanticisation of political participation, how do you see the possible role of architects within this continuously changing situation? [Markus Miessen] e role and the potential alternative roles of the architect is something that I have been interested in for some time. Over the last couple of years I have been investigating what I call Crossbench Praxis, a mode of practice, which, instead of fostering an all-inclusive model of participatory practice
when it comes to architecture and the built environment, focuses on a 1st person singular mode of engagement, creating a sensibility towards the necessity of assuming responsibility. e term `participation' has o en been misused as a tool for populist political legitimization rather than a tool that enables and produces actual situations. From my point of view it is increasingly important to both understand and communicate that change starts with you (yourself !) and not someone else or a group of potential stakeholders or constituencies. In my book e Nightmare of Participation, which may � at times � read like a redneck liberal or even conservative approach to the subject matter, I am propagating a practice that takes precisely this issue of responsibility into account. Architects, as a case study, may come in handy in this regard as they o en stand between the frontlines of the respective clients,
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CrossBenching: How to Design Spaces of Fertile Friction. Markus Miessen
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groups, stakeholders and agents, which become active and claim territorial power within urban projects. At Studio Miessen, as well as in my academic studio at the St�delschule in Frankfurt, we are currently working on a number of projects in which we are rethinking and designing spaces that envision and enable the emergence of new `publics', groups of individuals, who were previously not meeting in the same space. is pro-active imagining and designing towards speci c realities is crucial. And it necessitates individual action, o en self-initiated, which is something, which actually needs to be learned. At most schools of architecture, students are being conditioned to become managers of architectural projects instead of being sensitized towards a reality, which may also be in need of a more obtrusive, not to say aggressive, approach. In order to stimulate change one needs to be projective, propositional and initiating rather than reactive or even reactionary in terms of critical spatial practice on a larger scale. e architect is an interesting role model for independent, outside practice. Although, as an architect, one usually depends on a client-producer-relationship, one is (o en) not politically entangled with many of the power structures at play and can hence propose and operate based on one's individual ethics. is independent position allows one to approach a situation in a less biased and, arguably, more objective way than many directly involved and entangled individuals and groups can. e romanticisation of participatory practices, from my point of view, is o en based on the notion of participation as an all-inclusive model, a paradigm, which has had its day, especially since history shows that the all-inclusive model has a limit when it come to scale and, especially today, o en ends up
in Slacktivism that does not assume any longterm or sustainable forms of responsibility. In other words: I am not interested in political feel-good mechanisms that have little or no practical e ect. A er the 1990's have produced buzzwords such as `sustainability' or `participation', we are now facing a severe need to exit the normative framework of those catchy-phrase discourses that nestle around the all-so-politically-correct and reductive understanding of those terms. Culture is not stable, but based on dynamic processes of learning and becoming. ese processes need to be exploited towards a more di erentiated notion of spaces that foster the becoming of `publics' and complex collective identities. [ Z ] In the 2007 Lyon Biennale, you investigated the lack of peoples' understanding of Europe as a space, which started from the failure of the EU constitution. How would you re-read your work on Europe at the current moment of economic and social hardship � Greece, Italy, Spain et al � and the possible scenario of a geopolitical rearrangement of Europe? [ MM ] e project that I developed for the Lyon Biennial was one, which inquired the potential for a dissensual reading of spatial perceptions of Europe as a political geography, and how those individual readings could be corrupted and bastardized by the audience of the Biennial. In this sense, the idea of the project was precisely not to unite everyone around a table to try to engineer some form of consensus (i.e. "this is how we envision or imagine Europe"), but to exploit and exacerbate the di erences and to start a critical conversation about those di erences
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CrossBenching: How to Design Spaces of Fertile Friction. Markus Miessen
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by exposing them to processes of individual corruption. In regard to the current so-called crisis, it seems what is missing on a European political scale is a vision that supersedes the bureaucracy of the European Union as a transnational institution. is lack of a vision has, over the years, been identi ed by many international stakeholders, and has lead to growing frustration, in Europe itself, but also beyond its geographic and political horizon. e EU is currently facing the delayed e ects and a ects of a conceptual error it incorporated in its founding phase: it was thought of and constructed as an opportunistic economic entity rather than envisioned as a common political space with its respective political institutions. When no-one can make a decision stasis is about to kick in. Many stakeholders and voters across Europe have developed a growing frustration with the hermetic and in-transparent institutionalization, which has resulted in a situation in which a common ground for a constructive and productive conversation was missing. Due to the constant territorial growth as a result of more and more nations joining the political union, it has become increasingly di cult to identify with Europe as a space (or at least understand, depict or mentally visualize it spatially), as its geography and spatial perimeter has been exposed to ongoing changes in terms of scale, shape, political constituencies and potential border con icts. At the same time, there had not been a framework in place with which European citizens could identify with in the rst place. A constitution in the sense of a strategic manual, a conceptual manifesto so to speak, is crucial. When one cannot identify, either through a political framework or, as I argued, an imagination and visual understanding of a geography � i.e. Europe
as a space � it is di cult to make decisions about its future. My hypothesis for the project at the Lyon Biennial was precisely this: if potential voters for a European Constitution cannot identify, envision or visualize a spatial perception of Europe in the rst place, then how can they possibly make a productive decision about its future. is very much shows in the current so-called `Greek crisis', which has, by now, expanded and migrated into a Spanish crisis. e situation could, generally speaking, be described as a nancial crisis of Greece (or Spain), but has foremost become an identity and ideological crisis of Europe as a joint space, a space which has yet not managed to devise a strategy by which citizens from respective EU countries accept and value the respective (sub)cultures and realities of Europe, their neighboring and aligned states across the Union. But, from a personal point of view, I think that the energy of the con ict is `wasted' in the wrong locale: whereas Greece has been an incredibly reliant partner within the political Union, the UK has merely been exploiting the union as an economic framework. I would much prefer if there was a more severe stand against the British politics of opportunism within Europe, which concentrate mainly on Europe as a market. I am a strong believer in Europe. Whenever there has been a moment of crisis, Europe walked out of it stronger than before. Euroscepticism is a form of fear, a fear both in regard to structural change as well as a fear of cultural bastardization, which I nd in fact super-interesting. [ Z ] In your introduction to the `Architecture & Critical Spatial Practice' (ACSP) module, your studio at the St�delschule, you make a statement that much contemporary production
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CrossBenching: How to Design Spaces of Fertile Friction. Markus Miessen
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in architecture is void of its responsibilities towards how critical practices operate and is unaware of its consequences compared to the inquiries posed by art. How do you see this dialectic between what architecture physically is (practice) and what it ultimately aspires to be (theory), within your practice and research, and also within your teaching? [ MM ] When architecture is or becomes physical it has a reality to it that one cannot negate. It, by default, has consequences. What I am trying to foster is awareness for those very consequences. Its physicality does not necessarily become visible by newly adding physical structures to the built environment, but to enable change by designing the necessary frameworks that can alter the physical reality in which we work or learn, sleep or protest, gather or eat. Both at my studio in Berlin as well as at the school, we ask ourselves how one can be sensitized in regard to the way in which architecture and any designed and devised spatial mechanisms or frameworks perform, how they e ect physical reality and how they a ect its user, its passerby, to understand who is bene ting from it and who is su ering from it, to understand to whom it speaks. e key objective in this regard is the creation of new `publics': heterogeneous social entities, which have previously not met or overlapped in the same way. In a period, which could be labeled `post-public', the most important question about public spaces (rather than the myth of `public space') is how one can generate spaces that, even in private or institutional settings, can enable unbiased forms and formats of heterogeneous social gathering. Together with Nikolaus Hirsch, the director of the school, I am about to launch a new book series on
Critical Spatial Practice, in collaboration with Sternberg Press. e series will be investigating the blurry and o en instable relationships between space and the individuals and groups who produce it. [ Z ] In the past years you have been investigating con ict-based forms of participation, what Chantal Mou e calls `con ictual consensus' and what you call `agonistic spatial encounter' in your recent cultures of assembly teaching at the St�delschule. Could you please explain more about what the module tries to answer? [ MM ] In my studio at the St�delschule we are currently working on and towards an understanding, imagination and possible application towards what such `agonistic space' could possibly be, what it entails, how it can be devised, programmed and conceptually be constructed. is year, we are doing so by having rst investigated a series of examples broadly nestled around the concept of Cultures of Assembly, a set of formal and informal political spaces, which served as case studies towards an understanding in regard to spaces of assembly, congregation, and (political) gathering. ose examples ranged from deliberately designed spaces with a speci c and homogenous political message or propaganda in mind (such as Albert Speer's Zeppelinfeld in Nuremberg), speci cally designed assemblies on the scale of a State (a selection of international parliament interiors), informal and sometimes ad hoc spatial frameworks that enable political discussion by making territorial claims (Occupy Frankfurt and Tahrir Square), to name a few. For this rst phase of the project, we produced a newspaper titled Cultures of Assembly, which
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Parlimentary Chambers
01 Bundestag, Germany 02 Bundesrat, Germany 03 National Assembly, Serbia 04 National Assembly, South Korea 05 Hellenic Parliament, Greece 06 House of Commons, UK 07 House of Lords, UK 08 European Parliament, Strasbourg 09 General Assembly, United Nations 10 House of Representatives, Austria 11 Supreme People's Assembly, North Korea 12 Chamber of Deputies, Brazil.
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CrossBenching: How to Design Spaces of Fertile Friction. Markus Miessen
Cultures of Assembly, Architecture and Critical Spatial Practice,St�delschule Frankfurt, Ana Filipovic, Prof. Markus Miessen, 2011. Ana Filipovic.
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we rst presented at St�delschule's Rundgang in February and have been distributing since. If any of the readers are interested in this, please contact me and we will send you a copy. At present, we are moving into the second phase of the project, which is conceptually and geographically situated in the context of Frankfurt's so-called Kulturcampus project, which is large-scale local project that attempts to unite several of Frankfurt's key cultural players and institutions in a single physical site in the politically-charged neighborhood of Bockenheim, where the former Goethe University campus was located. As a group, we are working on alternative proposals towards the production of interim scenarios for the time between now and the moment of its o cial becoming, as well as strategies to sensitize politicians in regard to the imagining and implementing of more heterogeneous social zones within the site. We are interested in the notion of ambidexterity: to, on the one hand, exploit the economic and formal characteristics of the o cial (already proposed) project in order to, on the other hand, devise and nance modes of experimentation, which � together � will contribute to a more buoyant production of reality. [ Z ] For ACSP you propose a slightly unconventional outcome of studies, what you call a `thesis towards a `spatial condition', which could be an architectural scale proposal, a social event, a policy document, an analysis of spatial typologies, or a critical documentation of an existing situation. How needed is this diversi ed type of product, and is there a general framework where these di erent mediums become connected? Could this be a potential medium for a larger engagement
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CrossBenching: How to Design Spaces of Fertile Friction. Markus Miessen
Cultures of Assembly, Architecture and Critical Spatial Practice, St�delschule Frankfurt, Dunja Predic, Prof. Markus Miessen, 2011. Dunja Predic.
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with the public than proposals of physical interventions? [ MM ] What is the condition that we envision? I nd it very useful to think about a condition that one is working toward rather than to imagine a product or clearly outlined and pre-de ned physical framework. What I am attempting to foster at the school is a collaborative methodology, which takes into consideration that not every spatial situation or reality may favor a physical `solution' or approach. As already mentioned, we are doing this by working within, through, and around the emerging reality of Frankfurt's forthcoming Kulturcampus as a site of urban and institutional heterogeneity. During our case studies phase, which culminated in the newspaper, one of the `learning from' scenarios that we investigated were several international Occupy camps, most speci cally the one in Frankfurt, located outside the European Central Bank. One of the most interesting ndings had to do with the legal status of the camp, the way in which it was territorially and structurally organized and in which legal application had been written for it. Its status is that of a Mahnwache, which is a German term for a picket or guard rather than a demonstration. is legal framework is the most important asset for the realization of the local Occupy project as it allows for an organization and physicalization of the protest well beyond the timetable of a Demonstration, which is usually limited to a speci c timeframe. We found out that at some point the city of Frankfurt led an o cial complaint to the organizers of Occupy Frankfurt, claiming and warning them that in case they would not protest more they would have to clear the camp (part of the legal concept
of the Mahnwache is that there is a constant need for the presence of guarding the cause). Spatially, we were particularly interested in the way in which the participants of the camp had dealt with the legal implications regarding the territorial ground condition of the site, down to the detail of tent stakes (the nail-like metal pins that are used to lock the tent structure to the ground), for example. As one of the o cial policies stated that the moment that the ground condition was penetrated, the protesters could be removed from the site, the organizers devised a smart mechanism that created a new ground condition, a secondary layer on which everything oats, where every physical element touches, but never enters the existing topography of the park outside the European Central Bank. In the projects and methodology at ACSP, and also within many of our projects at Studio Miessen, it is our aim to approach architecture and spatial practice in this manner: to understand it as a composite of physical and non-physical realities, which together create a framework for action, a structural support that assumes responsibility and has consequences that one, as an author and producer, needs to be aware of. At my Berlin studio, we are currently working on a very interesting project, which is located in the rural and hilly landscape in-between Frankfurt and Cologne. e site is a former NATO military compound, which was shared by the US military and the German Bundeswehr. In case of a crisis during the Cold War, the site would have been used to assemble US nuclear warheads onto German medium-range missiles. e site is currently being developed into a cultural (art) center, a decentralized Kunsthalle of sorts, which consists of more than ten bunkers. We are currently devising a strategy for the overall site
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as well as developing a new typology, which will be added to the site in order to create a zone in which programmes, audiences and normative hierarchies are being attened. e project will explore key concepts such as co-existence, postoccupancy, and spaces of production. [ Z ] A er your experience of being involved in the Gulf region, would you say it is becoming less interesting or perhaps less relevant every day since the economic crisis? How do you see the relation between the production/dissemination of ideas on Middle East architecture and the built capitalist-controlled reality? Did the speed of production reverse the process of `idea to product' to `product to documentation' instead of actively intervening? [ MM ] I do not think that the economic crisis will have a lasting negative e ect on the Gulf region. As geography, it is strategically located between the co-called West and the Far East. ere is a rising importance of the region due to geopolitical changes and a general shi towards the East. is will not change; in fact it will become increasingly important and relevant. However, I agree that there are certain architectural and urban realities that are di cult and problematic, to say the least, and there is not really a strategy in place for the time a er the oil depletion. is is less true for places like Abu Dhabi and Dubai, but certainly for Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. When I started the Winter School Middle East in 2007 we were, in the rst year, investigating the issue of the Labor Camps in Dubai, to be followed by the question and theme of Institution Building in the second year. In 2010 the Winter School moved to Kuwait, where I, together with my co-director Zahra Ali Baba, will be pursuing a
series of research projects in regard to question of both Cultures of Assembly as well as what we currently call e Law of Gathering. Rather than fostering the normative Western critique of some of the mechanisms at play in the region, I am interested in the zooming into the spatial production and realities in speci c locations and situations. As an external advisor to the team that is currently preparing Kuwait's rst contribution to the Venice Biennale (Architecture, 2012), I am currently developing a content framework with the group in Kuwait. e theme will relate to precisely this question of what and how such spaces can contribute to political decision-making through spatial organization. In this sense I very strongly believe in public (micro) institutions as triggers and structural support-agents for the rise of di erentiated and agonistic publics
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CrossBenching: How to Design Spaces of Fertile Friction. Markus Miessen
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``Zawia is a periodical English & Arabic publication and collaborative events on architecture, design & urbanism.''
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